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Zen  and  the  Art  of  the  Internet
==============================================================================
                                            A Beginner's Guide to the Internet
                                                                 First Edition
                                                                  January 1992


by Brendan P. Kehoe
______________________________________________________________________________


This is revision 1.0 of February 2, 1992.


Copyright Oc 1992 Brendan P. Kehoe


Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this guide
provided the copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved on all
copies.

Permission is granted to copy and distribute modified versions of this booklet
under the conditions for verbatim copying, provided that the entire resulting
derived work is distributed under the terms of a permission notice identical
to this one.

Permission is granted to copy and distribute translations of this booklet into
another language, under the above conditions for modified versions, except
that this permission notice may be stated in a translation approved by the
author.
                                                                             i


Table of Contents  .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .   i


Preface  .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .   1


Acknowledgements   .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .   3


1    Network Basics     .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .   5

     1.1   Domains                                                       5
     1.2   Internet Numbers                                              7
     1.3   Resolving Names and Numbers                                   7
     1.4   The Networks                                                  8
     1.5   The Physical Connection                                       8


2    Electronic Mail    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .  11

     2.1   Email Addresses                                              11
        2.1.1   %@!.: Symbolic Cacophony                                11
        2.1.2   Sending and Receiving Mail                              12
        2.1.3   Anatomy of a Mail Header                                13
        2.1.4   Bounced Mail                                            14
     2.2   Mailing Lists                                                15
        2.2.1   Listservs                                               16


3    Anonymous FTP .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .  19

     3.1   FTP Etiquette                                                19
     3.2   Basic Commands                                               20
        3.2.1   Creating the Connection                                 20
        3.2.2   dir                                                     21
        3.2.3   cd                                                      22
        3.2.4   get and put                                             22
           3.2.4.1   ASCII vs Binary                                    23
           3.2.4.2   mget and mput                                      24

     3.3   The archie Server                                            25
        3.3.1   Using archie Today                                      25
        3.3.2   archie Clients                                          26
        3.3.3   Mailing archie                                          27
        3.3.4   The whatis database                                     27


4    Usenet News   .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .  29

     4.1   What Usenet Is                                               29
ii                                             Zen and the Art of the Internet


     4.2   The Diversity of Usenet                                      29
     4.3   What Usenet Is Not                                           29
     4.4   Propagation of News                                          31
     4.5   Group Creation                                               32
     4.6   If You're Unhappy:                                           33
     4.7   The History of Usenet (The ABCs)                             33
     4.8   Hierarchies                                                  34
     4.9   Moderated vs Unmoderated                                     35
     4.10   news.groups & news.announce.newgroups                       36
     4.11   How Usenet Works                                            36
     4.12   Mail Gateways                                               37

     4.13   Usenet "Netiquette"                                         37
        4.13.1   Signatures                                             37
        4.13.2   Posting Personal Messages                              38
        4.13.3   Posting Mail                                           38
        4.13.4   Test Messages                                          39
        4.13.5   Famous People Appearing                                39
        4.13.6   Summaries                                              39
        4.13.7   Quoting                                                40
        4.13.8   Crossposting                                           41
        4.13.9   Recent News                                            41
        4.13.10   Quality of Postings                                   42
        4.13.11   Useful Subjects                                       42
        4.13.12   Tone of Voice                                         42
        4.13.13   Computer Religion                                     43

     4.14   Frequently Asked Questions                                  43
        4.14.1   The Pit-Manager Archive                                43


5    Telnet   .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .  45

     5.1   Using Telnet                                                 45
        5.1.1   Telnet Ports                                            45
     5.2   Publicly Accessible Libraries                                46
     5.3   The Cleveland Freenet                                        47
     5.4   Directories                                                  47
        5.4.1   Knowbot                                                 48
        5.4.2   White Pages                                             48

     5.5   Databases                                                    48
        5.5.1   Colorado Alliance of Research Libraries (CARL)          48
        5.5.2   PENpages                                                49
        5.5.3   Clemson Univ. Forestry & Agricultural Network           49
        5.5.4   University of Maryland Info Database                    49
        5.5.5   University of Michigan Weather Underground              50
        5.5.6   Geographic Name Server                                  50
        5.5.7   FEDIX -- Minority Scholarship Information               50
        5.5.8   Science & Technology Information System                 51
        5.5.9   Ocean Network Information Center                        51
        5.5.10   NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database (NED)                 51
        5.5.11   U.S. Naval Observatory Automated Data Service          52
                                                                           iii


6    Various Tools   .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .     53

     6.1   Finger                                                       53
     6.2   Ping                                                         54
     6.3   Talk                                                         55
     6.4   The WHOIS Database                                           55
        6.4.1   Other Uses of WHOIS                                     57


7    Commercial Services  .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .     59

     7.1   Electronic Journals                                          59
     7.2   Commercial Databases                                         60
     7.3   Clarinet News                                                60


8    Things You'll Hear About  .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .     63

     8.1   The Internet Worm                                            63
     8.2   The Cuckoo's Egg                                             64
     8.3   Organizations                                                64
        8.3.1   The Association for Computing Machinery                 65
        8.3.2   Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility        65
        8.3.3   The Electronic Frontier Foundation                      66
        8.3.4   The Free Software Foundation                            68
        8.3.5   The League for Programming Freedom                      68

     8.4   Networking Initiatives                                       69
        8.4.1   NREN                                                    69


9    Finding Out More     .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .     71

     9.1   Internet Resource Guide                                      71
     9.2   Requests for Comments                                        71


Conclusion      .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .     73


Appendix A    Getting to Other Networks  .    .    .    .    .    .     75


Appendix B    Retrieving Files via Email .    .    .    .    .    .     77

     Archive Servers                                                    77
     FTP-by-Mail Servers                                                77
iv                                             Zen and the Art of the Internet


Appendix C    Newsgroup Creation    .    .    .    .    .    .    .     79

     Discussion                                                         79
     Voting                                                             79
     The Result of a Vote                                               81
     Creation of the Group                                              81


Glossary   .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .     83


Bibliography    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .     91

     Books                                                              91
     Periodicals & Papers                                               92


Index      .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .     95

Preface                                                                      1


Preface


    The composition of this booklet was originally started because the
Computer Science department at Widener University was in desperate need of
documentation describing the capabilities of this "great new Internet link" we
obtained.

    It's since grown into an effort to acquaint the reader with much of what's
currently available over the Internet. Aimed at the novice user, it attempts
to remain operating system "neutral" -- little information herein is specific
to Unix, VMS, or any other environment.  This booklet will, hopefully, be
usable by nearly anyone.

    Some typographical conventions are maintained throughout this guide. All
abstract items like possible filenames, usernames, etc., are all represented
in italics. Likewise, definite filenames and email addresses are represented
in a quoted `typewriter' font. A user's session is usually offset from the
rest of the paragraph, as such:

     prompt> command
          The results are usually displayed here.

    The purpose of this booklet is two-fold: first, it's intended to serve as
a reference piece, which someone can easily grab on the fly and look something
up.  Also, it forms a foundation from which people can explore the vast
expanse of the Internet.  Zen and the Art of the Internet doesn't spend a
significant amount of time on any one point; rather, it provides enough for
people to learn the specifics of what his or her local system offers.

    One warning is perhaps in order -- this territory we are entering can
become a fantastic time-sink. Hours can slip by, people can come and go, and
you'll be locked into Cyberspace. Remember to do your work!

    With that, I welcome you, the new user, to The Net.


                                                       [e-mail]
                                                                  Chester, PA
2                                              Zen and the Art of the Internet


Acknowledgements                                                             3


Acknowledgements


    Certain sections in this booklet are not my original work -- rather, they
are derived from documents that were available on the Internet and already
aptly stated their areas of concentration. The chapter on Usenet is, in large
part, made up of what's posted monthly to news.announce.newusers, with some
editing and rewriting.  Also, the main section on archie was derived from
`whatis.archie' by Peter Deutsch of the McGill University Computing Centre.
It's available via anonymous FTP from archie.mcgill.ca. Much of what's in the
telnet section came from an impressive introductory document put together by
SuraNet. Some definitions in the one are from an excellent glossary put
together by Colorado State University.

    This guide would not be the same without the aid of many people on The
Net, and the providers of resources that are already out there.  I'd like to
thank the folks who gave this a read-through and returned some excellent
comments, suggestions, and criticisms, and those who provided much-needed
information on the fly. Glee Willis deserves particular mention for all of his
work; this guide would have been considerably less polished without his help.


  o  Andy Blankenbiller, Army at Aberdeen

  o  Alan Emtage, McGill University Computer Science Department

  o  Brian Fitzgerald, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

  o  John Goetsch, Rhodes University, South Africa

  o  Jeff Kellem, Boston University's Chemistry Department

  o  Bill Krauss, Moravian College

  o  Steve Lodin, Delco Electronics

  o  Mike Nesel, NASA

  o  Bob Neveln, Widener University Computer Science Department

  o  Wanda Pierce, McGill University Computing Centre

  o  Joshua Poulson, Widener University Computing Services

  o  Dave Sill, Oak Ridge National Laboratory

  o  Bob Smart, CitiCorp/TTI

  o  Ed Vielmetti, Vice President of MSEN

  o  Craig Ward, USC/Information Sciences Institute (ISI)

  o  Glee Willis, University of Nevada, Reno

  o  Chip Yamasaki, OSHA
4                                              Zen and the Art of the Internet


Chapter 1: Network Basics                                                    5


1  Network Basics


    We are truly in an information society.  Now more than ever, moving vast
amounts of information quickly across great distances is one of our most
pressing needs.  From small one-person entrepreneurial efforts, to the largest
of corporations, more and more professional people are discovering that the
only way to be successful in the '90s and beyond is to realize that technology
is advancing at a break-neck pace -- and they must somehow keep up. Likewise,
researchers from all corners of the earth are finding that their work thrives
in a networked environment. Immediate access to the work of colleagues and a
"virtual" library of millions of volumes and thousands of papers affords them
the ability to encorporate a body of knowledge heretofore unthinkable. Work
groups can now conduct interactive conferences with each other, paying no heed
to physical location -- the possibilities are endless.

    You have at your fingertips the ability to talk in "real-time" with
someone in Japan, send a 2,000-word short story to a group of people who will
critique it for the sheer pleasure of doing so, see if a Macintosh sitting in
a lab in Canada is turned on, and find out if someone happens to be sitting in
front of their computer (logged on) in Australia, all inside of thirty
minutes. No airline (or tardis, for that matter) could ever match that travel
itinerary.

    The largest problem people face when first using a network is grasping all
that's available.  Even seasoned users find themselves surprised when they
discover a new service or feature that they'd never known even existed. Once
acquainted with the terminology and sufficiently comfortable with making
occasional mistakes, the learning process will drastically speed up.


1.1  Domains


    Getting where you want to go can often be one of the more difficult
aspects of using networks.  The variety of ways that places are named will
probably leave a blank stare on your face at first.  Don't fret; there is a
method to this apparent madness.

    If someone were to ask for a home address, they would probably expect a
street, apartment, city, state, and zip code. That's all the information the
post office needs to deliver mail in a reasonably speedy fashion.  Likewise,
computer addresses have a structure to them. The general form is:

     a person's email address on a computer: [e-mail]
     a computer's name: somewhere.domain

    The user portion is usually the person's account name on the system,
though it doesn't have to be.  somewhere.domain tells you the name of a
6                                              Zen and the Art of the Internet


system or location, and what kind of organization it is. The trailing domain
is often one of the following:

com          Usually a company or other commercial institution or
             organization, like Convex Computers (`convex.com').

edu          An educational institution, e.g.  New York University, named
             `nyu.edu'.

gov          A government site; for example, NASA is `nasa.gov'.

mil          A military site, like the Air Force (`af.mil').

net          Gateways and other administrative hosts for a network (it does
             not mean all of the hosts in a network).(1)  One such gateway is
             `near.net'.

org          This is a domain reserved for private organizations, who don't
             comfortably fit in the other classes of domains.  One example
             is the Electronic Frontier Foundation (see Section 8.3.3 [EFF],
             page 66), named `eff.org'.

    Each country also has its own top-level domain.  For example, the us
domain includes each of the fifty states.  Other countries represented with
domains include:

au           Australia

ca           Canada

fr           France

uk           The United Kingdom.  These also have sub-domains of things
             like `ac.uk' for academic sites and `co.uk' for commercial ones.

    The proper terminology for a site's domain name (somewhere.domain above)
is its Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN). It is usually selected to give a
clear indication of the site's organization or sponsoring agent. For example,
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's FQDN is `mit.edu'; similarly,
Apple Computer's domain name is `apple.com'.  While such obvious names are
usually the norm, there are the occasional exceptions that are ambiguous
enough to mislead -- like `vt.edu', which on first impulse one might surmise
is an educational institution of some sort in Vermont; not so. It's actually
the domain name for Virginia Tech. In most cases it's relatively easy to glean
the meaning of a domain name_such confusion is far from the norm.

_________________________________


 1  The Matrix, 111.
Chapter 1: Network Basics                                                    7


1.2  Internet Numbers


    Every single machine on the Internet has a unique address,2 called its
Internet number or IP Address.  It's actually a 32-bit number, but is most
commonly represented as four numbers joined by periods (`.'), like
147.31.254.130.  This is sometimes also called a dotted quad; there are
literally thousands of different possible dotted quads.  The ARPAnet (the
mother to today's Internet) originally only had the capacity to have up to 256
systems on it because of the way each system was addressed. In the early
eighties, it became clear that things would fast outgrow such a small limit;
the 32-bit addressing method was born, freeing thousands of host numbers.

    Each piece of an Internet address (like 192) is called an "octet,"
representing one of four sets of eight bits.  The first two or three pieces
(e.g. 192.55.239) represent the network that a system is on, called its
subnet. For example, all of the computers for Wesleyan University are in the
subnet 129.133.  They can have numbers like 129.133.10.10, 129.133.230.19, up
to 65 thousand possible combinations (possible computers).

    IP addresses and domain names aren't assigned arbitrarily -- that would
lead to unbelievable confusion.  An application must be filed with the
Network Information Center (NIC), either electronically (to
[e-mail]) or via regular mail.


1.3  Resolving Names and Numbers


    Ok, computers can be referred to by either their FQDN or their Internet
address.  How can one user be expected to remember them all?

    They aren't.  The Internet is designed so that one can use either method.
Since humans find it much more natural to deal with words than numbers in most
cases, the FQDN for each host is mapped to its Internet number.  Each domain
is served by a computer within that domain, which provides all of the
necessary information to go from a domain name to an IP address, and vice-
versa. For example, when someone refers to foosun.bar.com, the resolver knows
that it should ask the system foovax.bar.com about systems in bar.com.  It
asks what Internet address foosun.bar.com has; if the name foosun.bar.com
really exists, foovax will send back its number.  All of this "magic" happens
behind the scenes.

_________________________________


 2  At least one address, possibly two or even three -- but we won't go into
    that.
8                                              Zen and the Art of the Internet


    Rarely will a user have to remember the Internet number of a site
(although often you'll catch yourself remembering an apparently obscure
number, simply because you've accessed the system frequently).  However, you
will remember a substantial number of FQDNs.  It will eventually reach a point
when you are able to make a reasonably accurate guess at what domain name a
certain college, university, or company might have, given just their name.


1.4  The Networks


Internet     The Internet is a large "network of networks."   There is no one
             network known as The Internet; rather, regional nets like
             SuraNet, PrepNet, NearNet, et al., are all inter-connected (nay,
             "inter-networked") together into one great living thing,
             communicating at amazing speeds with the TCP/IP protocol.  All
             activity takes place in "real-time."

UUCP         The UUCP network is a loose association of systems all
             communicating with the `UUCP' protocol. (UUCP stands for `Unix-
             to-Unix Copy Program'.) It's based on two systems connecting to
             each other at specified intervals, called polling, and executing
             any work scheduled for either of them. Historically most UUCP was
             done with Unix equipment, although the software's since been
             implemented on other platforms (e.g. VMS). For example, the
             system oregano polls the system basil once every two hours. If
             there's any mail waiting for oregano, basil will send it at that
             time; likewise, oregano will at that time send any jobs waiting
             for basil.

BITNET       BITNET (the "Because It's Time Network") is comprised of systems
             connected by point-to-point links, all running the NJE protocol.
             It's continued to grow, but has found itself suffering at the
             hands of the falling costs of Internet connections.  Also, a
             number of mail gateways are in place to reach users on other
             networks.


1.5  The Physical Connection


    The actual connections between the various networks take a variety of
forms. The most prevalent for Internet links are 56k leased lines (dedicated
telephone lines carrying 56kilobit-per-second connections) and T1 links
(special phone lines with 1Mbps connections). Also installed are T3 links,
acting as backbones between major locations to carry a massive 45Mbps load of
traffic.
Chapter 1: Network Basics                                                    9


    These links are paid for by each institution to a local carrier (for
example, Bell Atlantic owns PrepNet, the main provider in Pennsylvania).  Also
available are SLIP connections, which carry Internet traffic (packets) over
high-speed modems.

    UUCP links are made with modems (for the most part), that run from 1200
baud all the way up to as high as 38.4Kbps.  As was mentioned in Section 1.4
[The Networks], page 8, the connections are of the store-and-forward variety.
Also in use are Internet-based UUCP links (as if things weren't already
confusing enough!). The systems do their UUCP traffic over TCP/IP connections,
which give the UUCP-based network some blindingly fast "hops,"  resulting in
better connectivity for the network as a whole. UUCP connections first became
popular in the 1970's, and have remained in wide-spread use ever since. Only
with UUCP can Joe Smith correspond with someone across the country or around
the world, for the price of a local telephone call.

    BITNET links mostly take the form of 9600bps modems connected from site to
site.   Often places have three or more links going;  the majority, however,
look to "upstream" sites for their sole link to the network.


                                         "The Glory and the Nothing of a Name"
                                                      Byron, Churchill's Grave
10                                             Zen and the Art of the Internet


Chapter 2: Electronic Mail                                                  11


2  Electronic Mail


    The desire to communicate is the essence of networking.  People have
always wanted to correspond with each other in the fastest way possible, short
of normal conversation. Electronic mail (or email) is the most prevalent
application of this in computer networking.  It allows people to write back
and forth without having to spend much time worrying about how the message
actually gets delivered.  As technology grows closer and closer to being a
common part of daily life, the need to understand the many ways it can be
utilized and how it works, at least to some level, is vital.


2.1  Email Addresses


    Electronic mail is hinged around the concept of an address; the section on
Networking Basics made some reference to it while introducing domains. Your
email address provides all of the information required to get a message to you
from anywhere in the world. An address doesn't necessarily have to go to a
human being. It could be an archive server,(1) a list of people, or even
someone's pocket pager.  These cases are the exception to the norm -- mail to
most addresses is read by human beings.


2.1.1  %@!.: Symbolic Cacophony


    Email addresses usually appear in one of two forms -- using the Internet
format which contains `@', an "at"-sign, or using the UUCP format which
contains `!', an exclamation point, also called a "bang."  The latter of the
two, UUCP "bang" paths, is more restrictive, yet more clearly dictates how the
mail will travel.

    To reach Jim Morrison on the system south.america.org, one would address
the mail as `[e-mail]'. But if Jim's account was on a UUCP site
named brazil, then his address would be `brazil!jm'. If it's possible (and one
exists), try to use the Internet form of an address; bang paths can fail if an
intermediate site in the path happens to be down. There is a growing trend for
UUCP sites to register Internet domain names, to help alleviate the problem of
path failures.

    Another symbol that enters the fray is `%' -- it acts as an extra
"routing" method.  For example, if the UUCP site  dream  is connected to

_________________________________


 1  See  [Archive Servers], page 77, for a description.
12                                             Zen and the Art of the Internet


south.america.org, but doesn't have an Internet domain name of its own, a user
debbie on dream can be reached by writing to the address

     [e-mail]

The form is significant. This address says that the local system should first
send the mail to south.america.org.  There the address debbie%dream will turn
into debbie@dream, which will hopefully be a valid address. Then
south.america.org will handle getting the mail to the host dream, where it
will be delivered locally to debbie.

    All of the intricacies of email addressing methods are fully covered in
the book !%@::  A Directory of Electronic Mail Addressing and Networks
published by O'Reilly and Associates, as part of their Nutshell Handbook
series.  It is a must for any active email user.  Write to [e-mail] for
ordering information.


2.1.2  Sending and Receiving Mail


    We'll make one quick diversion from being OS-neuter here, to show you what
it will look like to send and receive a mail message on a Unix system. Check
with your system administrator for specific instructions related to mail at
your site.

    A person sending the author mail would probably do something like this:

     % mail [e-mail]
     Subject: print job's stuck


     I typed `print babe.gif' and it didn't work! Why??

The next time the author checked his mail, he would see it listed in his
mailbox as:

     % mail
     "/usr/spool/mail/brendan": 1 messages 1 new 1 unread
      U  1 [e-mail] Tue May  5 20:36   29/956   print job's stuck
     ?

which gives information on the sender of the email, when it was sent, and the
subject of the message. He would probably use the `reply' command of Unix mail
to send this response:
Chapter 2: Electronic Mail                                                  13


     ? r
     To: [e-mail]
     Subject: Re: print job's stuck


     You shouldn't print binary files like GIFs to a printer!


     Brendan

    Try sending yourself mail a few times, to get used to your system's
mailer. It'll save a lot of wasted aspirin for both you and your system
administrator.


2.1.3  Anatomy of a Mail Header


    An electronic mail message has a specific structure to it that's common
across every type of computer system.2 A sample would be:

     From [e-mail] Sat May 25 17:06:01 1991
     Received: from hq.mil by house.gov with SMTP id AA21901
       (4.1/SMI for [e-mail]); Sat, 25 May 91 17:05:56 -0400
     Date: Sat, 25 May 91 17:05:56 -0400
     From: The President <[e-mail]>
     Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
     To: [e-mail]
     Subject: Meeting


     Hi Dan .. we have a meeting at 9:30 a.m. with the Joint Chiefs.  Please
     don't oversleep this time.

The first line, with `From' and the two lines for `Received:' are usually not
very interesting.  They give the "real" address that the mail is coming from
(as opposed to the address you should reply to, which may look much
different), and what places the mail went through to get to you.  Over the
Internet, there is always at least one `Received:' header and usually no more
than four or five.  When a message is sent using UUCP, one `Received:' header
is added for each system that the mail passes through.  This can often result
in more than a dozen `Received:' headers.  While they help with dissecting
problems in mail delivery, odds are the average user will never want to see
them.  Most mail programs will filter out this kind of "cruft" in a header.

    The `Date:' header contains the date and time the message was sent.
Likewise, the "good" address (as opposed to "real" address) is laid out in the
`From:' header.  Sometimes it won't include the full name of the person (in

_________________________________


 2  The standard is written down in RFC-822. See  [RFCs], page 73 for more
    info on how to get copies of the various RFCs.
14                                             Zen and the Art of the Internet


this case `The President'), and may look different, but it should always
contain an email address of some form.

    The `Message-ID:' of a message is intended mainly for tracing mail
routing, and is rarely of interest to normal users.  Every `Message-ID:' is
guaranteed to be unique.

    `To:' lists the email address (or addresses) of the recipients of the
message.  There may be a `Cc:' header, listing additional addresses. Finally,
a brief subject for the message goes in the `Subject:' header.

    The exact order of a message's headers may vary from system to system, but
it will always include these fundamental headers that are vital to proper
delivery.


2.1.4  Bounced Mail


    When an email address is incorrect in some way (the system's name is
wrong, the domain doesn't exist, whatever), the mail system will bounce the
message back to the sender, much the same way that the Postal Service does
when you send a letter to a bad street address.  The message will include the
reason for the bounce; a common error is addressing mail to an account name
that doesn't exist.  For example, writing to Lisa Simpson at Widener
University's Computer Science department will fail, because she doesn't have
an account.(3)

     From: Mail Delivery Subsystem <MAILER-DAEMON>
     Date: Sat, 25 May 91 16:45:14 -0400
     To: [e-mail]
     Cc: [e-mail]
     Subject: Returned mail: User unknown


        ----- Transcript of session follows -----
     While talking to cs.widener.edu:
     >>> RCPT To:<[e-mail]>
     <<< 550 <[e-mail]>... User unknown
     550 lsimpson... User unknown

As you can see, a carbon copy of the message (the `Cc:' header entry) was sent
to the postmaster of Widener's CS department.  The Postmaster  is responsible
for maintaining a reliable mail system on his system.  Usually postmasters at
sites will attempt to aid you in getting your mail where it's

_________________________________


 3  Though if she asked, we'd certainly give her one.
Chapter 2: Electronic Mail                                                  15


supposed to go.  If a typing error was made, then try re-sending the message.
If you're sure that the address is correct, contact the postmaster of the site
directly and ask him how to properly address it.

    The message also includes the text of the mail, so you don't have to
retype everything you wrote.

        ----- Unsent message follows -----
     Received: by cs.widener.edu id AA06528; Sat, 25 May 91 16:45:14 -0400
     Date: Sat, 25 May 91 16:45:14 -0400
     From: Matt Groening <[e-mail]>
     Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
     To: [e-mail]
     Subject: Scripting your future episodes
     Reply-To: [e-mail]


     : verbiage :

The full text of the message is returned intact, including any headers that
were added. This can be cut out with an editor and fed right back into the
mail system with a proper address, making redelivery a relatively painless
process.


2.2  Mailing Lists


    People that share common interests are inclined to discuss their hobby or
interest  at  every  available  opportunity.   One  modern  way to aid in this
exchange of information is by using a mailing list -- usually an email address
that  redistributes  all  mail  sent  to  it  back  out  to  a  list  of
addresses.  For example, the Sun Managers mailing list (of interest to people
that administer computers manufactured by Sun) has the address `sun-
[e-mail]'. Any mail sent to that address will "explode" out to
each person named in a file maintained on a computer at Northwestern
University.

    Administrative tasks (sometimes referred to as administrivia) are often
handled through other addresses, typically with the suffix `-request'.  To
continue the above, a request to be added to or deleted from the Sun Managers
list should be sent to `[e-mail]'.

    When in doubt, try to write to the `-request' version of a mailing list
address first; the other people on the list aren't interested in your desire
to be added or deleted, and can certainly do nothing to expedite your request.
Often if the administrator of a list is busy (remember, this is all peripheral
to real jobs and real work), many users find it necessary to ask again and
again, often with harsher and harsher language, to be removed from a list.
16                                             Zen and the Art of the Internet


This does nothing more than waste traffic and bother everyone else receiving
the messages. If, after a reasonable amount of time, you still haven't
succeeded to be removed from a mailing list, write to the postmaster at that
site and see if they can help.

    Exercise caution when replying to a message sent by a mailing list.  If
you wish to respond to the author only, make sure that the only address you're
replying to is that person, and not the entire list. Often messages of the
sort "Yes, I agree with you completely!" will appear on a list, boring the
daylights out of the other readers. Likewise, if you explicitly do want to
send the message to the whole list, you'll save yourself some time by checking
to make sure it's indeed headed to the whole list and not a single person.

    A list of the currently available mailing lists is available in at least
two places; the first is in a file on ftp.nisc.sri.com called `interest-
groups' under the `netinfo/' directory.  It's updated fairly regularly, but is
large (presently around 700K), so only get it every once in a while. The other
list is maintained by Gene Spafford ([e-mail]), and is posted in
parts to the newsgroup news.lists semi-regularly. (See Chapter 4 [Usenet
News], page 29, for info on how to read that and other newsgroups.)


2.2.1  Listservs


    On BITNET there's an automated system for maintaining discussion lists
called the listserv.  Rather than have an already harried and overworked human
take care of additions and removals from a list, a program performs these and
other tasks by responding to a set of user-driven commands.

    Areas  of  interest  are  wide  and  varied -- ETHICS-L  deals with ethics
in  computing,  while  ADND-L  has  to  do  with  a  role-playing  game.   A
full  list  of  the  available  BITNET  lists  can  be  obtained  by  writing
to `[e-mail]' with a body containing the command

     list  global

However, be sparing in your use of this -- see if it's already on your system
somewhere. The reply is quite large.

    The most fundamental command is `subscribe'. It will tell the listserv to
add the sender to a specific list. The usage is

     subscribe  foo-l  Your Real Name

It will respond with a message either saying that you've been added to the
list, or that the request has been passed on to the system on which the list
is actually maintained.
Chapter 2: Electronic Mail                                                  17


    The mate to `subscribe' is, naturally, `unsubscribe'.  It will remove a
given address from a BITNET list.  It, along with all other listserv commands,
can be abbreviated -- `subscribe' as `sub',  `unsubscribe' as `unsub', etc.
For a full list of the available listserv commands, write to
`[e-mail]', giving it the command `help'.

    As an aside, there have been implementations of the listserv system for
non-BITNET hosts (more specifically, Unix systems). One of the most complete
is available on cs.bu.edu in the directory `pub/listserv'.


                                "I made this letter longer than usual because
                                         I lack the time to make it shorter."
                                               Pascal, Provincial Letters XVI
18                                             Zen and the Art of the Internet


Chapter 3: Anonymous FTP                                                    19


3  Anonymous FTP


    FTP (File Transfer Protocol) is the primary method of transferring files
over the Internet. On many systems, it's also the name of the program that
implements the protocol.  Given proper permission, it's possible to copy a
file from a computer in South Africa to one in Los Angeles at very fast speeds
(on the order of 5-10K per second).  This normally requires either a user id
on both systems or a special configuration set up by the system
administrator(s).

    There is a good way around this restriction -- the anonymous FTP service.
It essentially will let anyone in the world have access to a certain area of
disk space in a non-threatening way.  With this, people can make files
publicly available with little hassle.  Some systems have dedicated entire
disks or even entire computers to maintaining extensive archives of source
code and information.   They include gatekeeper.dec.com (Digital),
wuarchive.wustl.edu (Washington University in Saint Louis), and
archive.cis.ohio-state.edu (The Ohio State University).

    The process involves the "foreign" user (someone not on the system itself)
creating an FTP connection and logging into the system as the user
`anonymous', with an arbitrary password:

     Name (foo.site.com:you): anonymous
     Password: [e-mail]

Custom and netiquette dictate that people respond to the Password: query with
an email address so that the sites can track the level of FTP usage, if they
desire.  (See Section 2.1 [Addresses], page 11 for information on email
addresses).

    The speed of the transfer depends on the speed of the underlying link. A
site that has a 9600bps SLIP connection will not get the same throughput as a
system with a 56k leased line (see Section 1.5 [The Physical Connection], page
8, for more on what kinds of connections can exist in a network). Also, the
traffic of all other users on that link will affect performance.  If there are
thirty people all FTPing from one site simultaneously, the load on the system
(in addition to the network connection) will degrade the overall throughput of
the transfer.


3.1  FTP Etiquette


    Lest we forget, the Internet is there for people to do work. People using
the network and the systems on it are doing so for a purpose, whether it be
20                                             Zen and the Art of the Internet


research, development, whatever.  Any heavy activity takes away from the
overall performance of the network as a whole.

    The effects of an FTP connection on a site and its link can vary; the
general rule of thumb is that any extra traffic created detracts from the
ability of that site's users to perform their tasks. To help be considerate of
this, it's highly recommended that FTP sessions be held only after normal
business hours for that site, preferably late at night. The possible effects
of a large transfer will be less destructive at 2 a.m. than 2 p.m. Also,
remember that if it's past dinner time in Maine, it's still early afternoon in
California -- think in terms of the current time at the site that's being
visited, not of local time.


3.2  Basic Commands


    While there have been many extensions to the various FTP clients out
there, there is a de facto "standard" set that everyone expects to work. For
more specific information, read the manual for your specific FTP program. This
section will only skim the bare minimum of commands needed to operate an FTP
session.


3.2.1  Creating the Connection


    The actual command to use FTP will vary among operating systems; for the
sake of clarity, we'll use `FTP' here, since it's the most general form.

    There are two ways to connect to a system -- using its hostname or its
Internet number.  Using the hostname is usually preferred.  However, some
sites aren't able to resolve  hostnames properly,  and have no alternative.
We'll assume you're able to use hostnames for simplicity's sake. The form is

     ftp  somewhere.domain

See Section 1.1 [Domains], page 5 for help with reading and using domain names
(in the example below, somewhere.domain is ftp.uu.net).

    You must first know the name of the system you want to connect to. We'll
use `ftp.uu.net' as an example. On your system, type:

     ftp ftp.uu.net

(the actual syntax will vary depending on the type of system the connection's
being made from). It will pause momentarily then respond with the message

     Connected to ftp.uu.net.

and an initial prompt will appear:
Chapter 3: Anonymous FTP                                                    21


     220 uunet FTP server (Version 5.100 Mon Feb 11 17:13:28 EST 1991) ready.
     Name (ftp.uu.net:jm):

to which you should respond with anonymous:

     220 uunet FTP server (Version 5.100 Mon Feb 11 17:13:28 EST 1991) ready.
     Name (ftp.uu.net:jm): anonymous

The system will then prompt you for a password; as noted previously, a good
response is your email address:

     331 Guest login ok, send ident as password.
     Password: [e-mail]
     230 Guest login ok, access restrictions apply.
     ftp>

The password itself will not echo. This is to protect a user's security when
he or she is using a real account to FTP files between machines. Once you
reach the ftp> prompt, you know you're logged in and ready to go.


3.2.2  dir


    At the `ftp>' prompt, you can type a number of commands to perform various
functions.  One example is `dir' -- it will list the files in the current
directory. Continuing the example from above:

     ftp> dir


     200 PORT command successful.
     150 Opening ASCII mode data connection for /bin/ls.
     total 3116
     drwxr-xr-x  2 7         21             512 Nov 21  1988 .forward
     -rw-rw-r--  1 7         11               0 Jun 23  1988 .hushlogin
     drwxrwxr-x  2 0         21             512 Jun  4  1990 Census
     drwxrwxr-x  2 0         120            512 Jan  8 09:36 ClariNet
                  : : : etc : : :
     -rw-rw-r--  1 7         14           42390 May 20 02:24 newthisweek.Z
                  : : : etc : : :
     -rw-rw-r--  1 7         14         2018887 May 21 01:01 uumap.tar.Z
     drwxrwxr-x  2 7         6             1024 May 11 10:58 uunet-info


     226 Transfer complete.
     5414 bytes received in 1.1 seconds (4.9 Kbytes/s)
     ftp>

The file `newthisweek.Z' was specifically included because we'll be using it
later.  Just for general information, it happens to be a listing of all of the
22                                             Zen and the Art of the Internet


files added to UUNET's archives during the past week.

    The directory shown is on a machine running the Unix operating system --
the dir command will produce different results on other operating systems
(e.g. TOPS, VMS, et al.). Learning to recognize different formats will take
some time. After a few weeks of traversing the Internet, it proves easier to
see, for example, how large a file is on an operating system you're otherwise
not acquainted with.

    With many FTP implementations, it's also possible to take the output of
dir and put it into a file on the local system with

     ftp> dir n* outfilename

the contents of which can then be read outside of the live FTP connection;
this is particularly useful for systems with very long directories (like
ftp.uu.net).  The above example would put the names of every file that begins
with an `n' into the local file outfilename.


3.2.3  cd


    At the beginning of an FTP session, the user is in a "top-level"
directory. Most things are in directories below it (e.g. `/pub'). To change
the current directory, one uses the cd command.  To change to the directory
`pub', for example, one would type

     ftp> cd pub

which would elicit the response

     250 CWD command successful.

Meaning the "Change Working Directory" command (`cd') worked properly. Moving
"up" a directory is more system-specific -- in Unix use the command `cd ..',
and in VMS, `cd [-]'.


3.2.4  get and put


    The actual transfer is performed with the get and put commands.  To get a
file from the remote computer to the local system, the command takes the form:

     ftp> get filename

where filename is the file on the remote system. Again using ftp.uu.net as an
example, the file `newthisweek.Z' can be retrieved with
Chapter 3: Anonymous FTP                                                    23


     ftp> get newthisweek.Z
     200 PORT command successful.
     150 Opening ASCII mode data connection for newthisweek.Z (42390 bytes).
     226 Transfer complete.
     local: newthisweek.Z remote: newthisweek.Z
     42553 bytes received in 6.9 seconds (6 Kbytes/s)
     ftp>

The section below on using binary mode instead of ASCII will describe why this
particular choice will result in a corrupt and subsequently unusable file.

    If, for some reason, you want to save a file under a different name (e.g.
your system can only have 14-character filenames, or can only have one dot in
the name), you can specify what the local filename should be by providing get
with an additional argument

     ftp> get newthisweek.Z uunet-new

which will place the contents of the file `newthisweek.Z' in `uunet-new' on
the local system.

    The transfer works the other way, too.  The put command will transfer a
file from the local system to the remote system. If the permissions are set up
for an FTP session to write to a remote directory, a file can be sent with

     ftp> put filename

As with get, put will take a third argument, letting you specify a different
name for the file on the remote system.


3.2.4.1  ASCII vs Binary


    In the example above, the file `newthisweek.Z' was transferred, but
supposedly not correctly.  The reason is this:  in a normal ASCII transfer
(the default), certain characters are translated between systems, to help make
text files more readable. However, when binary files (those containing non-
ASCII characters) are transferred, this translation should not take place. One
example is a binary program -- a few changed characters can render it
completely useless.

    To avoid this problem, it's possible to be in one of two modes -- ASCII or
binary. In binary mode, the file isn't translated in any way. What's on the
remote system is precisely what's received.  The commands to go between the
two modes are:

     ftp> ascii
     200 Type set to A.   (Note the A, which signifies ASCII mode.)


     ftp> binary
     200 Type set to I.   (Set to Image format, for pure binary transfers.)
24                                             Zen and the Art of the Internet


Note that each command need only be done once to take effect; if the user
types binary, all transfers in that session are done in binary mode (that is,
unless ascii is typed later).

    The transfer of `newthisweek.Z' will work if done as:

     ftp> binary
     200 Type set to I.
     ftp> get newthisweek.Z
     200 PORT command successful.
     150 Opening BINARY mode data connection for newthisweek.Z (42390 bytes).
     226 Transfer complete.
     local: newthisweek.Z remote: newthisweek.Z
     42390 bytes received in 7.2 seconds (5.8 Kbytes/s)

          Note:  The file size (42390) is different from that done in ASCII
          mode (42553) bytes; and the number 42390 matches the one in the
          listing of UUNET's top directory.  We can be relatively sure that
          we've received the file without any problems.


3.2.4.2  mget and mput


    The commands mget and mput allow for multiple file transfers using
wildcards to get several files, or a whole set of files at once, rather than
having to do it manually one by one.  For example, to get all files that begin
with the letter `f', one would type

     ftp> mget f*

Similarly, to put all of the local files that end with .c:

     ftp> mput *.c

    Rather than reiterate what's been written a hundred times before, consult
a local manual for more information on wildcard matching (every DOS manual,
for example, has a section on it).

    Normally, FTP assumes a user wants to be prompted for every file in a mget
or mput operation. You'll often need to get a whole set of files and not have
each of them confirmed -- you know they're all right. In that case, use the
prompt command to turn the queries off.

     ftp> prompt
     Interactive mode off.

Likewise, to turn it back on, the prompt command should simply be issued
again.
Chapter 3: Anonymous FTP                                                    25


3.3  The archie Server


    A group of people at McGill University in Canada got together and created
a query system called archie. It was originally formed to be a quick and easy
way to scan the offerings of the many anonymous FTP sites that are maintained
around the world.  As time progressed, archie grew to include other valuable
services as well.

    The archie service is accessible through an interactive telnet session,
email queries, and command-line and X-window clients. The email responses can
be used along with FTPmail servers for those not on the Internet.  (See [FTP-
by-Mail Servers], page 77, for info on using FTPmail servers.)


3.3.1  Using archie Today


    Currently, archie tracks the contents of over 800 anonymous FTP archive
sites containing over a million files stored across the Internet.
Collectively, these files represent well over 50 gigabytes of information,
with new entries being added daily.

    The archie server automatically updates the listing information from each
site about once a month.  This avoids constantly updating the databases, which
could waste network resources, yet ensures that the information on each site's
holdings is reasonably up to date.

    To access archie interactively,  telnet to one of the existing servers.(1)
They include

       archie.ans.net (New York, USA)
       archie.rutgers.edu (New Jersey, USA)
       archie.sura.net (Maryland, USA)
       archie.unl.edu (Nebraska, USA)
       archie.mcgill.ca (the first Archie server, in Canada)
       archie.funet.fi (Finland)
       archie.au (Australia)
       archie.doc.ic.ac.uk (Great Britain)

At the login: prompt of one of the servers, enter `archie' to log in.  A
greeting will be displayed, detailing information about ongoing work in the
archie project; the user will be left at a `archie>' prompt, at which he may
enter commands.  Using `help' will yield instructions on using the `prog'
command to make queries, `set' to control various aspects of the server's

_________________________________


 1  See Chapter 5 [Telnet], page 45, for notes on using the telnet program.
26                                             Zen and the Art of the Internet


operation, et al.  Type `quit' at the prompt to leave archie.  Typing the
query `prog vine.tar.Z' will yield a list of the systems that offer the source
to the X-windows program vine; a piece of the information returned looks like:

     Host ftp.uu.net   (137.39.1.9)
     Last updated 10:30  7 Jan 1992


         Location: /packages/X/contrib
           FILE       rw-r--r--     15548  Oct  8 20:29   vine.tar.Z


     Host nic.funet.fi   (128.214.6.100)
     Last updated 05:07  4 Jan 1992


         Location: /pub/X11/contrib
           FILE       rw-rw-r--     15548  Nov  8 03:25   vine.tar.Z


3.3.2  archie Clients


    There are two main-stream archie clients, one called (naturally enough)
`archie',  the other `xarchie' (for X-Windows).   They query the archie
databases and yield a list of systems that have the requested file(s)
available for anonymous FTP, without requiring an interactive session to the
server. For example, to find the same information you tried with the server
command `prog', you could type

     % archie vine.tar.Z
     Host athene.uni-paderborn.de
         Location: /local/X11/more_contrib
                 FILE -rw-r--r--       18854  Nov 15 1990  vine.tar.Z


     Host emx.utexas.edu
         Location: /pub/mnt/source/games
                 FILE -rw-r--r--       12019  May  7 1988  vine.tar.Z


     Host export.lcs.mit.edu
         Location: /contrib
                 FILE -rw-r--r--       15548  Oct  9 00:29  vine.tar.Z

    Note that your system administrator may not have installed the archie
clients yet; the source is available on each of the archie servers, in the
directory `archie/clients'.

    Using the X-windows client is much more intuitive -- if it's installed,
just read its man page and give it a whirl. It's essential for the networked
desktop.
Chapter 3: Anonymous FTP                                                    27


3.3.3  Mailing archie


    Users limited to email connectivity to the Internet should send a message
to the address `[e-mail]' with the single word help in the body
of the message. An email message will be returned explaining how to use the
email archie server, along with the details of using FTPmail. Most of the
commands offered by the telnet interface can be used with the mail server.


3.3.4  The whatis database


    In addition to offering access to anonymous FTP listings,  archie also
permits access to the whatis description database.  It includes the names and
brief synopses for over 3,500 public domain software packages, datasets and
informational documents located on the Internet.

    Additional whatis databases are scheduled to be added in the future.
Planned offerings include listings for the names and locations of online
library catalog programs, the names of publicly accessible electronic mailing
lists, compilations of Frequently Asked Questions lists, and archive sites for
the most popular Usenet newsgroups. Suggestions for additional descriptions or
locations databases are welcomed and should be sent to the archie developers
at `[e-mail]'.


                                                        "Was f"ur pl"undern!"
                                                 ("What a place to plunder!")
                                                   Gebhard Leberecht Bl"ucher
28                                             Zen and the Art of the Internet


Chapter 4: Usenet News                                                      29


4  Usenet News


    The first thing to understand about Usenet is that it is widely
misunderstood.  Every day on Usenet the "blind men and the elephant"
phenomenon appears, in spades.  In the opinion of the author, more flame wars
(rabid arguments) arise because of a lack of understanding of the nature of
Usenet than from any other source.  And consider that such flame wars arise,
of necessity,  among people who are on Usenet.  Imagine, then, how poorly
understood Usenet must be by those outside!

    No essay on the nature of Usenet can ignore the erroneous impressions held
by many Usenet users. Therefore, this section will treat falsehoods first.
Keep reading for truth. (Beauty, alas, is not relevant to Usenet.)


4.1  What Usenet Is


    Usenet is the set of machines that exchange articles tagged with one or
more universally-recognized labels, called newsgroups (or "groups" for short).
(Note that the term `newsgroup' is correct, while `area', `base', `board',
`bboard', `conference', `round table', `SIG', etc. are incorrect. If you want
to be understood, be accurate.)


4.2  The Diversity of Usenet


    If the above definition of Usenet sounds vague, that's because it is. It
is almost impossible to generalize over all Usenet sites in any non-trivial
way. Usenet encompasses government agencies, large universities, high schools,
businesses of all sizes, home computers of all descriptions, etc.

    Every administrator controls his own site.  No one has any real control
over any site but his own. The administrator gets his power from the owner of
the system he administers. As long as the owner is happy with the job the
administrator is doing, he can do whatever he pleases, up to and including
cutting off Usenet entirely. C'est la vie.


4.3  What Usenet Is Not


Usenet is not an organization.

            Usenet has no central authority.  In fact, it has no central
            anything. There is a vague notion of "upstream" and "downstream"
30                                             Zen and the Art of the Internet


            related to the direction of high-volume news flow. It follows
            that, to the extent that "upstream" sites decide what traffic they
            will carry for their "downstream" neighbors, that "upstream" sites
            have some influence on their neighbors. But such influence is
            usually easy to circumvent, and heavy-handed manipulation
            typically results in a backlash of resentment.

Usenet is not a democracy.

            A democracy can be loosely defined as "government of the people,
            by the people, for the people."  However, as explained above,
            Usenet is not an organization, and only an organization can be run
            as a democracy.   Even a democracy must be organized, for if it
            lacks a means of enforcing the peoples' wishes, then it may as
            well not exist.

            Some people wish that Usenet were a democracy. Many people pretend
            that it is. Both groups are sadly deluded.

Usenet is not fair.

            After all, who shall decide what's fair? For that matter, if
            someone is behaving unfairly, who's going to stop him?  Neither
            you nor I, that's certain.

Usenet is not a right.

            Some people misunderstand their local right of "freedom of speech"
            to mean that they have a legal right to use others' computers to
            say what they wish in whatever way they wish, and the owners of
            said computers have no right to stop them.

            Those people are wrong.  Freedom of speech also means freedom not
            to speak; if I choose not to use my computer to aid your speech,
            that is my right.  Freedom of the press belongs to those who own
            one.

Usenet is not a public utility.

            Some Usenet sites are publicly funded or subsidized.  Most of
            them, by plain count, are not. There is no government monopoly on
            Usenet, and little or no control.

Usenet is not a commercial network.

            Many Usenet sites are academic or government organizations; in
            fact, Usenet originated in academia. Therefore, there is a Usenet
            custom of keeping commercial traffic to a minimum.  If such
            commercial traffic is generally considered worth carrying, then it
            may be grudgingly tolerated. Even so, it is usually separated
            somehow from non-commercial traffic; see comp.newprod.
Chapter 4: Usenet News                                                      31


Usenet is not the Internet.

            The Internet is a wide-ranging network, parts of which are
            subsidized by various governments. The Internet carries many kinds
            of traffic; Usenet is only one of them.  And the Internet is only
            one of the various networks carrying Usenet traffic.

Usenet is not a Unix network, nor even an ASCII network.

            Don't assume that everyone is using "rn" on a Unix machine. There
            are Vaxen running VMS, IBM mainframes, Amigas, and MS-DOS PCs
            reading and posting to Usenet.  And, yes, some of them use
            (shudder) EBCDIC. Ignore them if you like, but they're out there.

Usenet is not software.

            There are dozens of software packages used at various sites to
            transport and read Usenet articles.  So no one program or package
            can be called "the Usenet software."

            Software designed to support Usenet traffic can be (and is) used
            for other kinds of communication, usually without risk of mixing
            the two.  Such private communication networks are typically kept
            distinct from Usenet by the invention of newsgroup names different
            from the universally-recognized ones.

Usenet is not a UUCP network.

            UUCP is a protocol (some might say protocol suite, but that's a
            technical point) for sending data over point-to-point connections,
            typically using dialup modems. Usenet is only one of the various
            kinds of traffic carried via UUCP, and UUCP is only one of the
            various transports carrying Usenet traffic.


    Well, enough negativity.


4.4  Propagation of News


    In the old days,  when UUCP over long-distance dialup lines was the
dominant means of article transmission, a few well-connected sites had real
influence in determining which newsgroups would be carried where.  Those sites
called themselves "the backbone."

    But things have changed. Nowadays, even the smallest Internet site has
connectivity the likes of which the backbone admin of yesteryear could only
dream.  In addition, in the U.S., the advent of cheaper long-distance calls
and high-speed modems has made long-distance Usenet feeds thinkable for
smaller companies.  There is only one pre-eminent UUCP transport site
32                                             Zen and the Art of the Internet


today in the U.S., namely UUNET. But UUNET isn't a player in the propagation
wars, because it never refuses any traffic -- it gets paid by the minute,
after all; to refuse based on content would jeopardize its legal status as an
enhanced service provider.

    All of the above applies to the U.S. In Europe, different cost structures
favored the creation of strictly controlled hierarchical organizations with
central registries. This is all very unlike the traditional mode of U.S. sites
(pick a name, get the software, get a feed, you're on).  Europe's "benign
monopolies", long uncontested, now face competition from looser organizations
patterned after the U.S. model.


4.5  Group Creation


    As discussed above, Usenet is not a democracy.  Nevertheless, currently
the most popular way to create a new newsgroup involves a "vote" to determine
popular support for (and opposition to) a proposed newsgroup. See Appendix C
[Newsgroup Creation], page 79, for detailed instructions and guidelines on the
process involved in making a newsgroup.

    If you follow the guidelines, it is probable that your group will be
created and will be widely propagated. However, due to the nature of Usenet,
there is no way for any user to enforce the results of a newsgroup vote (or
any other decision, for that matter).  Therefore, for your new newsgroup to be
propagated widely, you must not only follow the letter of the guidelines; you
must also follow its spirit.  And you must not allow even a whiff of shady
dealings or dirty tricks to mar the vote.

    So, you may ask: How is a new user supposed to know anything about the
"spirit" of the guidelines?  Obviously, she can't.  This fact leads inexorably
to the following recommendation:

     If you're a new user, don't try to create a new newsgroup alone.

If you have a good newsgroup idea, then read the news.groups newsgroup for a
while (six months, at least) to find out how things work. If you're too
impatient to wait six months, then you really need to learn; read news.groups
for a year instead. If you just can't wait, find a Usenet old hand to run the
vote for you.

    Readers may think this advice unnecessarily strict.  Ignore it at your
peril. It is embarrassing to speak before learning. It is foolish to jump into
a society you don't understand with your mouth open. And it is futile to try
to force your will on people who can tune you out with the press of a key.
Chapter 4: Usenet News                                                      33


4.6  If You're Unhappy:


    Property rights being what they are,  there is no higher authority on
Usenet than the people who own the machines on which Usenet traffic is
carried. If the owner of the machine you use says, "We will not carry alt.sex
on this machine," and you are not happy with that order, you have no Usenet
recourse. What can we outsiders do, after all?

    That doesn't mean you are without options.  Depending on the nature of
your site, you may have some internal political recourse.  Or you might find
external pressure helpful. Or, with a minimal investment, you can get a feed
of your own from somewhere else. Computers capable of taking Usenet feeds are
down in the $500 range now, Unix-capable boxes are going for under $2000, and
there are at least two Unix lookalikes in the $100 price range.

    No matter what, appealing to "Usenet" won't help.  Even if those who read
such an appeal regarding system administration are sympathetic to your cause,
they will almost certainly have even less influence at your site than you do.

    By the same token, if you don't like what some user at another site is
doing, only the administrator and/or owner of that site have any authority to
do anything about it. Persuade them that the user in question is a problem for
them, and they might do something (if they feel like it).  If the user in
question is the administrator or owner of the site from which he or she posts,
forget it; you can't win.  Arrange for your newsreading software to ignore
articles from him or her if you can, and chalk one up to experience.


4.7  The History of Usenet (The ABCs)


    In the beginning, there were conversations, and they were good.  Then came
Usenet in 1979, shortly after the release of V7 Unix with UUCP; and it was
better.  Two Duke University grad students in North Carolina, Tom Truscott and
Jim Ellis, thought of hooking computers together to exchange information with
the Unix community.  Steve Bellovin, a grad student at the University of North
Carolina, put together the first version of the news software using shell
scripts and installed it on the first two sites:  unc and duke.  At the
beginning of 1980 the network consisted of those two sites and phs (another
machine at Duke), and was described at the January 1980 Usenix conference in
Boulder, CO.(1)  Steve Bellovin later rewrote the scripts into C programs, but
they were never released beyond unc and duke. Shortly thereafter, Steve Daniel

_________________________________

 1  The Usenix conferences are semi-annual meetings where members of the
    Usenix Association, a group of Unix enthusiasts, meet and trade notes.
34                                             Zen and the Art of the Internet


did another implementation in the C programming language for public
distribution.  Tom Truscott made further modifications, and this became the
"A" news release.

    In 1981 at the University of California at Berkeley, grad student Mark
Horton and high school student Matt Glickman rewrote the news software to add
functionality and to cope with the ever increasing volume of news -- "A" news
was intended for only a few articles per group per day.  This rewrite was the
"B" news version. The first public release was version 2.1 in 1982; all
versions before 2.1 were considered in beta test.  As The Net grew, the news
software was expanded and modified.  The last version maintained and released
primarily by Mark was 2.10.1.

    Rick Adams, then at the Center for Seismic Studies, took over coordination
of the maintenance and enhancement of the news software with the 2.10.2
release in 1984. By this time, the increasing volume of news was becoming a
concern, and the mechanism for moderated groups was added to the software at
2.10.2.  Moderated groups were inspired by ARPA mailing lists and experience
with other bulletin board systems.  In late 1986, version 2.11 of news was
released, including a number of changes to support a new naming structure for
newsgroups, enhanced batching and compression, enhanced ihave/sendme control
messages, and other features.  The current release of news is 2.11, patchlevel
19.

    A new version of news, becoming known as "C" news, has been developed at
the University of Toronto by Geoff Collyer and Henry Spencer.  This version is
a rewrite of the lowest levels of news to increase article processing speed,
decrease article expiration processing and improve the reliability of the news
system through better locking,  etc.  The package was released to The Net in
the autumn of 1987.  For more information, see the paper News Need Not Be
Slow, published in the Winter 1987 Usenix Technical Conference proceedings.

    Usenet software has also been ported to a number of platforms, from the
Amiga and IBM PCs all the way to minicomputers and mainframes.


4.8  Hierarchies


    Newsgroups are organized according to their specific areas of
concentration.  Since the groups are in a tree structure, the various areas
are called hierarchies. There are seven major categories:


`comp'       Topics of interest to both computer professionals and hobbyists,
             including topics in computer science, software sources, and
             information on hardware and software systems.
Chapter 4: Usenet News                                                      35


`misc'       Group addressing themes not easily classified into any of the
             other headings or which incorporate themes from multiple
             categories.  Subjects include fitness, job-hunting, law, and
             investments.

`sci'        Discussions marked by special knowledge relating to research in
             or application of the established sciences.

`soc'        Groups primarily addressing social issues and socializing.
             Included are discussions related to many different world
             cultures.

`talk'       Groups largely debate-oriented and tending to feature long
             discussions without resolution and without appreciable amounts of
             generally useful information.

`news'       Groups concerned with the news network, group maintenance, and
             software.

`rec'        Groups oriented towards hobbies and recreational activities

    These  "world"  newsgroups  are  (usually)  circulated  around  the
entire Usenet -- this implies world-wide distribution.  Not all groups
actually enjoy such wide distribution, however. The European Usenet and Eunet
sites take only a selected subset of the more "technical" groups, and
controversial "noise" groups are often not carried by many sites in the U.S.
and  Canada (these groups are primarily under the `talk' and `soc'
classifications). Many sites do not carry some or all of the comp.binaries
groups because of the typically large size of the posts in them (being actual
executable programs).

    Also available are a number of "alternative" hierarchies:

`alt'        True anarchy; anything and everything can and does appear;
             subjects include sex, the Simpsons, and privacy.

`gnu'        Groups concentrating on interests and software with the GNU
             Project of the Free Software Foundation.  For further info on
             what the FSF is, see Section 8.3.4 [FSF], page 68.

`biz'        Business-related groups.


4.9  Moderated vs Unmoderated


    Some newsgroups insist that the discussion remain focused and on-target;
to serve this need, moderated groups came to be.  All articles posted to a
moderated group get mailed to the group's moderator. He or she periodically
(hopefully sooner than later) reviews the posts, and then either posts them
36                                             Zen and the Art of the Internet


individually to Usenet, or posts a composite digest of the articles for the
past day or two. This is how many mailing list gateways work (for example, the
Risks Digest).


4.10  news.groups & news.announce.newgroups


    Being a good net.citizen includes being involved in the continuing growth
and evolution of the Usenet system.  One part of this involvement includes
following the discussion in the groups news.groups and the notes in
news.announce.newgroups. It is there that discussion goes on about the
creation of new groups and destruction of inactive ones.  Every person on
Usenet is allowed and encouraged to vote on the creation of a newsgroup.


4.11  How Usenet Works


    The transmission of Usenet news is entirely cooperative. Feeds are
generally provided out of good will and the desire to distribute news
everywhere.  There are places which provide feeds for a fee (e.g.  UUNET), but
for the large part no exchange of money is involved.

    There are two major transport methods, UUCP and NNTP.  The first is mainly
modem-based and involves the normal charges for telephone calls. The second,
NNTP, is the primary method for distributing news over the Internet.

    With UUCP, news is stored in batches on a site until the neighbor calls to
receive the articles, or the feed site happens to call.  A list of groups
which the neighbor wishes to receive is maintained on the feed site.  The
Cnews system compresses its batches, which can dramatically reduce the
transmission time necessary for a relatively heavy newsfeed.

    NNTP, on the other hand, offers a little more latitude with how news is
sent.  The traditional store-and-forward method is, of course, available.
Given the "real-time" nature of the Internet, though, other methods have been
devised.  Programs now keep constant connections with their news neighbors,
sending news nearly instantaneously, and can handle dozens of simultaneous
feeds, both incoming and outgoing.

    The transmission of a Usenet article is centered around the unique
`Message-ID:' header.  When an NNTP site offers an article to a neighbor, it
says it has that specific Message ID. If the neighbor finds it hasn't received
the article yet, it tells the feed to send it through; this is repeated for
each and every article that's waiting for the neighbor.  Using unique IDs
Chapter 4: Usenet News                                                      37


helps prevent a system from receiving five copies of an article from each of
its five news neighbors, for example.

    Further information on how Usenet works with relation to the various
transports is available in the documentation for the Cnews and NNTP packages,
as well as in RFC-1036, the Standard for Interchange of USENET Messages and
RFC-977, Network News Transfer Protocol: A Proposed Standard for the Stream-
Based Transmission of News. The RFCs do tend to be rather dry reading,
particularly to the new user.  See  [RFCs], page 73 for information on
retrieving RFCs.


4.12  Mail Gateways


    A natural progression is for Usenet news and electronic mailing lists to
somehow become merged -- which they have, in the form of news gateways. Many
mailing lists are set up to "reflect" messages not only to the readership of
the list, but also into a newsgroup.  Likewise, posts to a newsgroup can be
sent to the moderator of the mailing list, or to the entire mailing list. Some
examples of this in action are comp.risks (the Risks Digest) and
comp.dcom.telecom (the Telecom Digest).

    This method of propagating mailing list traffic has helped solve the
problem of a single message being delivered to a number of people at the same
site -- instead, anyone can just subscribe to the group.  Also, mailing list
maintenance is lowered substantially, since the moderators don't have to be
constantly removing and adding users to and from the list.  Instead, the
people can read and not read the newsgroup at their leisure.


4.13  Usenet "Netiquette"


    There are many traditions with Usenet, not the least of which is dubbed
netiquette -- being polite and considerate of others. If you follow a few
basic guidelines, you, and everyone that reads your posts, will be much
happier in the long run.


4.13.1  Signatures


    At the end of most articles is a small blurb called a person's signature.
In Unix this file is named `.signature' in the person's login directory -- it
will vary for other operating systems.  It exists to provide information about
how to get in touch with the person posting the article, including
38                                             Zen and the Art of the Internet


their email address, phone number, address, or where they're located. Even so,
signatures have become the graffiti of computers. People put song lyrics,
pictures, philosophical quotes, even advertisements in their ".sigs". (Note,
however, that advertising in your signature will more often than not get you
flamed until you take it out.)

    Four lines will suffice -- more is just extra garbage for Usenet sites to
carry along with your article, which is supposed to be the intended focus of
the reader.  Netiquette dictates limiting oneself to this "quota" of four --
some people make signatures that are ten lines or even more, including
elaborate ASCII drawings of their hand-written signature or faces or even the
space shuttle. This is not cute, and will bother people to no end.

    Similarly, it's not necessary to include your signature -- if you forget
to append it to an article, don't worry about it.  The article's just as good
as it ever would be, and contains everything you should want to say.  Don't
re-post the article just to include the signature.


4.13.2  Posting Personal Messages


    If mail to a person doesn't make it through, avoid posting the message to
a newsgroup. Even if the likelihood of that person reading the group is very
high, all of the other people reading the articles don't give a whit what you
have to say to Jim Morrison. Simply wait for the person to post again and
double-check the address, or get in touch with your system administrator and
see if it's a problem with local email delivery. It may also turn out that
their site is down or is having problems, in which case it's just necessary to
wait until things return to normal before contacting Jim.


4.13.3  Posting Mail


    In the interests of privacy, it's considered extremely bad taste to post
any email that someone may have sent, unless they explicitly give you
permission to redistribute it.  While the legal issues can be heavily debated,
most everyone agrees that email should be treated as anything one would
receive via normal snailmail,(2) with all of the assumed rights that are
carried with it.

_________________________________


 2  The slang for the normal land and air postal service.
Chapter 4: Usenet News                                                      39


4.13.4  Test Messages


    Many people, particularly new users, want to try out posting before
actually taking part in discussions. Often the mechanics of getting messages
out is the most difficult part of Usenet.  To this end, many, many users find
it necessary to post their tests to "normal" groups (for example, news.admin
or comp.mail.misc). This is considered a major netiquette faux pas in the
Usenet world.  There are a number of groups available, called test groups,
that exist solely for the purpose of trying out a news system, reader, or even
new signature. They include

     alt.test
     gnu.gnusenet.test
     misc.test

some of which will generate auto-magic replies to your posts to let you know
they made it through. There are certain denizens of Usenet that frequent the
test groups to help new users out. They respond to the posts, often including
the article so the poster can see how it got to the person's site. Also, many
regional hierarchies have test groups, like phl.test in Philadelphia.

    By all means, experiment and test -- just do it in its proper place.


4.13.5  Famous People Appearing


    Every once in a while, someone says that a celebrity is accessible through
"The Net";  or, even more entertaining, an article is forged to appear to be
coming  from  that  celebrity.   One  example  is  Stephen  Spielberg -- the
rec.arts.movies readership was in an uproar for two weeks following a couple
of posts supposedly made by Mr.  Spielberg.  (Some detective work revealed it
to be a hoax.)

    There are a few well-known people that are acquainted with Usenet and
computers in general -- but the overwhelming majority are just normal people.
One should act with skepticism whenever a notable personality is "seen" in a
newsgroup.


4.13.6  Summaries


    Authors of articles occasionally say that readers should reply by mail and
they'll summarize. Accordingly, readers should do just that -- reply via mail.
Responding with a followup article to such an article defeats the intention of
the author. She, in a few days, will post one article containing the
highlights of the responses she received. By following up to the whole group,
the author may not read what you have to say.
40                                             Zen and the Art of the Internet


    When creating a summary of the replies to a post, try to make it as
reader-friendly as possible.  Avoid just putting all of the messages received
into one big file. Rather, take some time and edit the messages into a form
that contains the essential information that other readers would be interested
in.

    Also, sometimes people will respond but request to remain anonymous (one
example is the employees of a corporation that feel the information's not
proprietary, but at the same time want to protect themselves from political
backlash).  Summaries should honor this request accordingly by listing the
`From:' address as `anonymous' or `(Address withheld by request)'.


4.13.7  Quoting


    When following up to an article, many newsreaders provide the facility to
quote the original article with each line prefixed by `> ', as in

     In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] wrote:
     > I agree, I think that basketweaving's really catching on,
     > particularly in Pennsylvania.  Here's a list of every person
     > in PA that currently engages in it publicly:


     : etc :


    This is a severe example (potentially a horribly long article), but proves
a point.  When you quote another person, edit out whatever isn't directly
applicable to your reply.(3)  This gives the reader of the new article a
better idea of what points you were addressing.  By including the entire
article, you'll only annoy those reading it.  Also, signatures in the original
aren't necessary; the readers already know who wrote it (by the attribution).

    Avoid being tedious with responses -- rather than pick apart an article,
address it in parts or as a whole. Addressing practically each and every word
in an article only proves that the person responding has absolutely nothing
better to do with his time.

    If a "war" starts (insults and personal comments get thrown back and
forth), take it into email -- exchange email with the person you're arguing
with. No one enjoys watching people bicker incessantly.

_________________________________


 3  But not changing their words, of course.
Chapter 4: Usenet News                                                      41


4.13.8  Crossposting


    The `Newsgroups:' line isn't limited to just one group -- an article can
be posted in a list of groups. For instance, the line

     Newsgroups: sci.space,comp.simulation

posts the article to both the groups sci.space and comp.simulation. It's
usually safe to crosspost to up to three or four groups.  To list more than
that is considered "excessive noise."

    It's also suggested that if an article is crossposted a `Followup-To:'
header be included. It should name the group to which all additional
discussion should be directed to. For the above example a possible `Followup-
To:' would be

     Followup-To: sci.space

which would make all followups automatically be posted to just sci.space,
rather than both sci.space and comp.simulation.  If every response made with a
newsreader's "followup" command should go to the person posting the article no
matter what, there's also a mechanism worked in to accommodate.  The Followup-
To: header should contain the single word `poster':

     Followup-To: poster

Certain newsreaders will use this to sense that a reply should never be posted
back onto The Net.  This is often used with questions that will yield a
summary of information later, a vote, or an advertisement.


4.13.9  Recent News


    One should avoid posting "recent" events -- sports scores, a plane crash,
or whatever people will see on the evening news or read in the morning paper.
By the time the article has propagated across all of Usenet, the "news" value
of the article will have become stale. (This is one case for the argument that
`Usenet news' is a misnomer.(4))


_________________________________


 4  Note that the Clarinet News service (see Section 7.3 [Clarinet], page 60)
    offers news items in a Usenet format as a precise alternative to the
    morning paper, et. al.
42                                             Zen and the Art of the Internet


4.13.10  Quality of Postings


    How you write and present yourself in your articles is important.  If you
have terrible spelling, keep a dictionary near by.  If you have trouble with
grammar and punctuation, try to get a book on English grammar and composition
(found in many bookstores and at garage sales). By all means pay attention to
what you say -- it makes you who you are on The Net.

    Likewise, try to be clear in what you ask. Ambiguous or vague questions
often lead to no response at all, leaving the poster discouraged.  Give as
much essential information as you feel is necessary to let people help you,
but keep it within limits.  For instance, you should probably include the
operating system of your computer in the post if it's needed, but don't tell
everybody what peripherals you have hanging off of it.


4.13.11  Useful Subjects


    The `Subject:' line of an article is what will first attract people to
read it -- if it's vague or doesn't describe what's contained within, no one
will read the article. At the same time, `Subject:' lines that're too wordy
tend to be irritating. For example:

Good         Subject: Building Emacs on a Sun Sparc under 4.1

Good         Subject: Tryin' to find Waldo in NJ.

Bad          Subject: I can't get emacs to work !!!

Bad          Subject: I'm desperately in search of the honorable Mr. Waldo
             in the state of...

Simply put, try to think of what will best help the reader when he or she
encounters your article in a newsreading session.


4.13.12  Tone of Voice


    Since common computers can't portray the inflection or tone in a person's
voice, how articles are worded can directly affect the response to them.  If
you say

     Anybody using a Vic-20 should go buy themselves a life.

you'll definitely get some responses -- telling you to take a leap. Rather
than be inflammatory, phrase your articles in a way that rationally expresses
your opinion, like

     What're the practical uses of a Vic-20 these days?
Chapter 4: Usenet News                                                      43


which presents yourself as a much more level-headed individual.

    Also, what case (upper or lower) you use can indicate how you're trying to
speak -- netiquette dictates that if you USE ALL CAPITAL LETTERS, people will
think you're "shouting."  Write as you would in a normal letter to a friend,
following traditional rules of English (or whatever language you happen to
speak).


4.13.13  Computer Religion


    No matter what kind of computer a person is using,  theirs is always the
best and most efficient of them all. Posting articles asking questions like
`What computer should I buy? An Atari ST or an Amiga?' will lead only to
fervent arguments over the merits and drawbacks of each brand. Don't even ask
The Net -- go to a local user group, or do some research of your own like
reading some magazine reviews.  Trying to say one computer is somehow better
than another is a moot point.


4.14  Frequently Asked Questions


    A number of groups include Frequently Asked Question (FAQ) lists, which
give the answers to questions or points that have been raised time and time
again in a newsgroup.  They're intended to help cut down on the redundant
traffic in a group.  For example, in the newsgroup alt.tv.simpsons, one
recurring question is `Did you notice that there's a different blackboard
opening at the beginning of every Simpsons episode?' As a result, it's part of
the FAQ for that group.

    Usually, FAQ lists are posted at the beginning of each month, and are set
to expire one month later (when, supposedly, the next FAQ will be published).
Nearly every FAQ is also crossposted to news.answers, which is used as a
Usenet repository for them.


4.14.1  The Pit-Manager Archive


    MIT, with Jonathan Kamens, has graciously dedicated a machine to the
archiving and storage of the various periodic postings that are peppered
throughout the various Usenet groups. To access them, FTP to the system pit-
manager.mit.edu and look in the directory `/pub/usenet'.


                                        "Be it true or false, so it be news."
                                          Ben Jonson, News from the New World
44                                             Zen and the Art of the Internet


Chapter 5: Telnet                                                           45


5  Telnet


    Telnet is the main Internet protocol for creating a connection with a
remote machine.  It gives the user the opportunity to be on one computer
system and do work on another, which may be across the street or thousands of
miles away. Where modems are limited, in the majority, by the quality of
telephone lines and a single connection, telnet provides a connection that's
error-free and nearly always faster than the latest conventional modems.


5.1  Using Telnet


    As with FTP (see Section 3.2.2 [Anonymous FTP], page 21), the actual
command for negotiating a telnet connection varies from system to system. The
most common is telnet itself, though. It takes the form of:

     telnet somewhere.domain

To be safe, we'll use your local system as a working example. By now, you
hopefully know your site's domain name. If not, ask or try to figure it out.
You'll not get by without it.

    To open the connection, type

     telnet your.system.name

If the system were wubba.cs.widener.edu, for example, the command would look
like

     telnet wubba.cs.widener.edu

The system will respond with something similar to

     Trying 147.31.254.999...
     Connected to wubba.cs.widener.edu.
     Escape character is '^]'.

The escape character, in this example ^] (Control-]), is the character that
will let you go back to the local system to close the connection, suspend it,
etc.  To close this connection, the user would type ^], and respond to the
telnet> prompt with the command close.  Local documentation should be checked
for information on specific commands,  functions,  and escape character that
can be used.


5.1.1  Telnet Ports


    Many telnet clients also include a third option, the port on which the
46                                             Zen and the Art of the Internet


connection should take place.  Normally, port 23 is the default telnet port;
the user never has to think about it. But sometimes it's desirable to telnet
to a different port on a system, where there may be a service available, or to
aid in debugging a problem. Using

     telnet somewhere.domain port

will connect the user to the given port on the system somewhere.domain. Many
libraries use this port method to offer their facilities to the general
Internet community;  other services are also available.  For instance,  one
would type

     telnet martini.eecs.umich.edu 3000

to connect to the geographic server at the University of Michigan (see Section
5.5.6 [Geographic Server], page 50). Other such port connections follow the
same usage.


5.2  Publicly Accessible Libraries


    Over the last several years, most university libraries have switched from
a manual (card) catalog system to computerized library catalogs.  The
automated systems provide users with easily accessible and up-to-date
information about the books available in these libraries.  This has been
further improved upon with the advent of local area networks, dialup modems,
and wide area networks. Now many of us can check on our local library's
holdings or that of a library halfway around the world!

    Many, many institutions of higher learning have made their library
catalogs available for searching by anyone on the Internet. They include
Boston University, the Colorado Alliance of Research Libraries (CARL), and
London University King's College.

    To include a listing of some of the existing sites would not only be far
too long for this document, it would soon be out of date.  Instead, several
lists are being maintained and are available either by mail or via FTP. Also,
the Internet Resource Guide (IRG) also describes a few libraries that are
accessible -- see Section 9.1 [IRG], page 71 for further information.

    Art St. George and Ron Larsen are maintaining a list of Internet-
accessible libraries and databases often referred to as "the St. George
directory."  It began with only library catalogs but has expanded to include
sections on campus-wide information systems, and even bulletin board systems
that are not on the Internet.  The library catalog sections are divided into
those that are free, those that charge, and international (i.e. non-U.S.)
catalogs; they are arranged by state, province, or country within each
section.  There is also a section giving dialup information for some of the
library catalogs.  It's available for FTP (see Section 3.2.2
Chapter 5: Telnet                                                           47


[Anonymous FTP], page 21) on nic.cerf.net in the directory
`cerfnet/cerfnet_info/library_catalog'.  The file `internet-catalogs' has a
date suffix; check for the most current date. The information is updated
periodically.

    Billy Barron, Systems Manager at the University of North Texas, produces a
directory as an aid to his user community.  It complements the St. George
guide by providing a standard format for all systems which lists the Internet
address, login instructions, the system vendor, and logoff information.  The
arrangement is alphabetic by organization name.  It's available for FTP on
vaxb.acs.unt.edu in the subdirectory `library' as the file `libraries.txt'.

    For announcements of new libraries being available and discussion on
related topics, consult the Usenet newsgroup comp.internet.library (see
Chapter 4 [Usenet News], page 29 to learn how to read news).


5.3  The Cleveland Freenet


    Freenets are open-access, free, community computer systems.  One such
system is the Cleveland Freenet, sponsored by CWRU (Case Western Reserve
University).  Anyone and everyone is welcome to join and take part in the
exciting project -- that of a National Telecomputing Public Network, where
everyone benefits. There's no charge for the registration process and no
charge to use the system.

    To register, telnet to any one of

     freenet-in-a.cwru.edu
     freenet-in-b.cwru.edu
     freenet-in-c.cwru.edu

After you're connected, choose the entry on the menu that signifies you're a
guest user. Another menu will follow; select `Apply for an account', and
you'll be well on your way to being a FreeNet member.

    You will need to fill out a form and send it to them through the Postal
Service -- your login id and password will be created in a few days. At that
point you're free to use the system as you wish.  They provide multi-user
chat, email, Usenet news, and a variety of other things to keep you occupied
for hours on end.


5.4  Directories


    There are a few systems that are maintained to provide the Internet
community with access to lists of information -- users, organizations, etc.
They range from fully dedicated computers with access to papers and research
results, to a system to find out about the faculty members of a university.
48                                             Zen and the Art of the Internet


5.4.1  Knowbot


    Knowbot is a "master directory" that contains email address information
from the NIC WHOIS database (see Section 6.4.1 [Whois], page 57), the PSI
White Pages Pilot Project, the NYSERNET X.500 database and MCI Mail.  Most of
these services are email registries themselves, but Knowbot provides a very
comfortable way to access all of them in one place.  Telnet to
nri.reston.va.us on port 185.


5.4.2  White Pages


    PSI maintains a directory of information on individuals.  It will list the
person's name,  organization,  and email address if it is given.  Telnet to
wp.psi.net and log in as `fred'. The White Pages Project also includes an
interface to use Xwindows remotely.


5.5  Databases


    For information on database services, see Section 7.2 [Commercial
Databases], page 60.  Not all databases on the Internet require payment for
use, though.  There do exist some, largely research-driven databases, which
are publicly accessible.  New ones spring up regularly.

    To find out more about the databases in this section, contact the people
directly responsible for them. Their areas of concentration and the software
used to implement them are widely disparate, and are probably beyond the
author's expertise.  Also, don't forget to check with your local library --
the reference librarian there can provide information on conventional
resources, and possibly even those available over the Internet (they are
becoming more common).


5.5.1  Colorado Alliance of Research Libraries (CARL)


    The Colorado Alliance of Research Libraries (CARL), in association with
CARL Systems Inc., operates a public access catalog of services. Offered are a
number of library databases, including searches for government periodicals,
book reviews, indices for current articles, and access to to other library
Chapter 5: Telnet                                                           49


databases around the country. Other services are available to CARL members
including an online encyclopedia. Telnet to pac.carl.org, or write to
`[e-mail]' for more details.


5.5.2  PENpages


    PENpages is an agriculturally-oriented database administered by
Pennsylvania State University. Information entered into PENpages is provided
by numerous sources including the Pennsylvania Dept. of Agriculture, Rutgers
University, and Penn State.  Easy-to-use menus guide users to information
ranging from cattle and agricultural prices to current weather information,
from health information to agricultural news from around the nation.  A
keyword search option also allows users to search the database for related
information and articles.  The database is updated daily, and a listing of
most recent additions is displayed after login.  Telnet to psupen.psu.edu and
log in as the user `PNOTPA'.


5.5.3  Clemson Univ. Forestry & Agricultural Network


    Clemson maintains a database similar to PENpages in content, but the
information provided tends to be localized to the Southeastern United States.
A menu-driven database offers queries involving the weather, food, family, and
human resources. Telnet to eureka.clemson.edu and log in as `PUBLIC'. You need
to be on a good VT100 emulator (or a real VT terminal).


5.5.4  University of Maryland Info Database


    The Computer Science department of the University of Maryland maintains a
repository of information on a wide variety of topics.  They wish to give a
working example of how network technology can (and should) provide as much
information as possible to those who use it. Telnet to info.umd.edu and log in
as `info'. The information contained in the database is accessible through a
screen-oriented interface, and everything therein is available via anonymous
FTP.

    There is a mailing list used to discuss the UMD Info Database, welcoming
suggestions for new information, comments on the interface the system
provides, and other related topics.  Send mail to [e-mail] with a
body of

     subscribe INFO-L Your Full Name

See Section 2.2.1 [Listservs],  page 16 for more information on using the
Listserv system.
50                                             Zen and the Art of the Internet


5.5.5  University of Michigan Weather Underground


    The University of Michigan's Department of Atmospheric, Oceanic, & Space
Sciences maintains a database of weather and related information for the
United States and Canada. Available are current weather conditions and
forecasts for cities in the U.S., a national weather summary, ski conditions,
earthquake and hurricane updates, and a listing of severe weather conditions.
Telnet to madlab.sprl.umich.edu on port 3000 to use the system.


5.5.6  Geographic Name Server


    A geographic database listing information for cities in the United States
and some international locations is maintained by Merit, Inc. The database is
searchable by city name,  zip code,  etc.  It will respond with a lot of
information: the area code, elevation, time zone, and longitude and latitude
are included. For example, a query of `19013' yields

     0 Chester
     1 42045 Delaware
     2 PA Pennsylvania
     3 US United States
     F 45 Populated place
     L 39 50 58 N  75 21 22 W
     P 45794
     E 22
     Z 19013
     Z 19014
     Z 19015
     Z 19016
     .

To use the server, telnet to martini.eecs.umich.edu on port 3000.  The command
`help' will yield further instructions, along with an explanation for each of
the fields in a reponse.


5.5.7  FEDIX -- Minority Scholarship Information


    FEDIX is an on-line information service that links the higher education
community and the federal government to facilitate research, education, and
services.  The system provides accurate and timely federal agency information
to colleges, universities, and other research organizations.  There are no
registration fees and no access charges for FEDIX whatsoever.
Chapter 5: Telnet                                                           51


    FEDIX offers the Minority On-Line Information Service (MOLIS), a database
listing current information about Black and Hispanic colleges and
universities.

    Daily information updates are made on federal education and research
programs, scholarships, fellowships, and grants, available used research
equipment, and general information about FEDIX itself.  To access the
database, telnet to fedix.fie.com and log in as `fedix'.


5.5.8  Science & Technology Information System


    The STIS is maintained by the National Science Foundation (NSF), and
provides access to many NSF publications. The full text of publications can be
searched online and copied from the system, which can accommodate up to ten
users at one time.  Telnet to stis.nsf.gov and log in as `public'. Everything
on the system is also available via anonymous FTP.  For further information,
contact:

     STIS, Office of Information Systems, Room 401
     National Science Foundation
     1800 G. Street, N.W.
     Washington, D.C.  20550
     [e-mail]
     [phone]
     [phone] (Fax)


5.5.9  Ocean Network Information Center


    The University of Delaware College of Marine Studies offers access to an
interactive database of research information covering all aspects of marine
studies, nicknamed OCEANIC. This includes the World Oceanic Circulation
Experiment (WOCE) information and program information, research ship schedules
and information, and a Who's Who of email and mailing addresses for oceanic
studies.  Data from a variety of academic institutions based on research
studies is also available. Telnet to delocn.udel.edu and log in as `INFO'.


5.5.10  NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database (NED)


    The NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database (NED) is an ongoing project, funded
by NASA, to make data and literature on extragalactic objects available over
computer networks.  NED is an object-oriented database which contains
52                                             Zen and the Art of the Internet


extensive information for nearly 132,000 extragalactic objects taken from
about major catalogs of galaxies, quasars, infrared and radio sources. NED
provides positions, names, and other basic data (e.g. magnitude types, sizes
and redshifts as well as bibliographic references and abstracts). Searches can
be done by name, around a name, and on an astronomical position. NED contains
a tutorial which guides the user through the retrieval process.  Telnet to
ipac.caltech.edu and log in as `ned'.


5.5.11  U.S. Naval Observatory Automated Data Service


    Operated by the U.S. Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C., this automated
data service provides database access to information ranging from current
navigational satellite positioning, astronomical data, and software utilities.
A wide variety of databases can be searched and instructions for file transfer
are given.  Telnet to tycho.usno.navy.mil and log in as `ads'.


          "My consciousness suddenly switched locations, for the first time in
               my life, from the vicinity of my head and body to a point about
                        twenty feet away from where I normally see the world."
                                             Howard Rheingold, Virtual Reality
Chapter 6: Various Tools                                                    53


6  Various Tools


    New and interesting ways to use the Internet are being dreamed up every
day.  As they gain wide-spread use, some methods become near-standard (or
actual written standard) tools for Internet users to take advantage of. A few
are detailed here; there are undoubtedly others, and new ideas spring up all
the time.  An active user of the Internet will discover most of the more
common ones in time. Usually, these services are free. See Chapter 7
[Commercial Services], page 59 for applications that are commercially
available over the Internet.

    Usenet is often used to announce a new service or capability on the
Internet. In particular, the groups comp.archives and comp.protocols.tcp-ip
are good places to look.  Information will drift into other areas as word
spreads.  See Chapter 4 [Usenet News], page 29 for information on reading
news.


6.1  Finger


    On many systems there exists the `finger' command, which yield information
about each user that's currently logged in. This command also has extensions
for use over the Internet, as well.  Under normal circumstances, the command
is simply `finger' for a summary of who's logged into the local system, or
`finger username' for specific information about a user. It's also possible to
go one step further and go onto the network.  The general usage is

     finger @hostname

To see who's currently logged in at Widener University, for instance, use


     % finger @cs.widener.edu
     [cs.widener.edu]
     Login        Name               TTY Idle    When             Where
     brendan  Brendan Kehoe          p0       Fri 02:14  tattoo.cs.widene
     sven     Sven Heinicke          p1       Fri 04:16  xyplex3.cs.widen

To find out about a certain user, they can be fingered specifically (and need
not be logged in):
54                                             Zen and the Art of the Internet


     % finger [e-mail]
     [cs.widener.edu]
     Login name: bart                         In real life: Bart Simpson
     Directory: /home/springfield/bart        Shell: /bin/underachiever
     Affiliation: Brother of Lisa             Home System: channel29.fox.org
     Last login Thu May 23 12:14 (EDT) on ttyp6 from channel29.fox.org.
     No unread mail
     Project: To become a "fluff" cartoon character.
     Plan:
     Don't have a cow, man.

Please realize that some sites are very security conscious, and need to
restrict the information about their systems and users available to the
outside world. To that end, they often block finger requests from outside
sites -- so don't be surprised if fingering a computer or a user returns with
`Connection refused'.


6.2  Ping


    The `ping' command allows the user to check if another system is currently
"up" and running.  The general form of the command is `ping system'.(1) For
example,

     ping cs.widener.edu

will tell you if the main machine in Widener University's Computer Science lab
is currently online (we certainly hope so!).

    Many implementations of `ping' also include an option to let you see how
fast a link is running (to give you some idea of the load on the network).
For example:

     % ping -s cs.swarthmore.edu
     PING cs.swarthmore.edu: 56 data bytes
     64 bytes from 130.58.68.1: icmp_seq=0 ttl=251 time=66 ms
     64 bytes from 130.58.68.1: icmp_seq=1 ttl=251 time=45 ms
     64 bytes from 130.58.68.1: icmp_seq=2 ttl=251 time=46 ms
     ^C
     --- cs.swarthmore.edu ping statistics ---
     3 packets transmitted, 3 packets received, 0% packet loss
     round-trip min/avg/max = 45/52/66 ms

This case tells us that for `cs.swarthmore.edu' it takes about 46 milliseconds
for a packet to go from Widener to Swarthmore College and back again.

_________________________________


 1  The usage will, again, vary.
Chapter 6: Various Tools                                                    55


It also gives the average and worst-case speeds, and any packet loss that may
have occurred (e.g. because of network congestion).

    While `ping' generally doesn't hurt network performance, you shouldn't use
it too often -- usually once or twice will leave you relatively sure of the
other system's state.


6.3  Talk


    Sometimes email is clumsy and difficult to manage when one really needs to
have an interactive conversation. The Internet provides for that as well, in
the form of talk. Two users can literally see each other type across thousands
of miles.

    To talk with Bart Simpson at Widener, one would type

     talk [e-mail]

which would cause a message similar to the following to be displayed on Bart's
terminal:

     Message from [e-mail] at 21:45 ...
     talk: connection requested by [e-mail]
     talk: respond with:  talk [e-mail]

Bart would, presumably, respond by typing `talk [e-mail]'.  They
could then chat about whatever they wished, with instantaneous response time,
rather than the write-and-wait style of email.  To leave talk, on many systems
one would type Ctrl-C (hold down the Control key and press `C'). Check local
documentation to be sure.

    There are two different versions of talk in common use today.  The first,
dubbed "old talk," is supported by a set of Unix systems (most notably, those
currently sold by Sun).  The second, ntalk (aka "new talk"), is more of the
standard.  If, when attempting to talk with another user, it responds with an
error about protocol families, odds are the incompatibilities between versions
of talk is the culprit.  It's up to the system administrators of sites which
use the old talk to install ntalk for their users.


6.4  The WHOIS Database


    The main WHOIS database is run at the Network Information Center (NIC).
The `whois' command will let you search a database of every registered domain
(e.g. `mit.edu') and of registered users. It's primarily used by system
postmasters or listowners to find the Points of Contact for a site, to let
56                                             Zen and the Art of the Internet


them know of a problem or contact them for one reason or another.  You can
also find out their postal address.  For example:


     % whois mit.edu
     Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) MIT.EDU             18.72.2.1
     Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT-DOM)                   MIT.EDU


Note that there are two entries for `mit.edu'; we'll go for the second.


     % whois mit-dom
     Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT-DOM) )  Mailing address
        Cambridge, MA 02139


        Domain Name: MIT.EDU  )  Domain name


        Administrative Contact, Technical Contact, Zone Contact:
           Schiller, Jeffrey I.  (JIS)  [e-mail]
           [phone]


        Record last updated on 22-Jun-88.  )  Last change made to the record


        Domain servers in listed order:    )  Systems that can tell you the
                                                Internet addresses for a site
        STRAWB.MIT.EDU                18.71.0.151
        W20NS.MIT.EDU                 18.70.0.160
        BITSY.MIT.EDU                 18.72.0.3
        LITHIUM.LCS.MIT.EDU           18.26.0.121


     To see this host record with registered users, repeat the command with a
     star ('*') before the name; or, use '%' to show JUST the registered
     users.


Much better!  Now this information (sought, possibly, by a system
administrator) can be used to find out how to notify MIT of a security issue
or problem with connectivity.


    Queries can be made for individuals as well; the following would yield an
entry for the author:
Chapter 6: Various Tools                                                    57


     % whois brendan
     Kehoe, Brendan (BK59) [e-mail]
        Widener University
        Department of Computer Science
        Kirkbride 219
        P.O. Box 83 Widener University
        Chester, PA 19013
        (215)/499-4011


        Record last updated on 02-May-91.

Included is the author's name, his handle (a unique sequence of letters and
numbers), information on how to contact him, and the last time the record was
modified in any way.

    Anyone can register with the whois database.  People who are
administrative or technical contacts for domains are registered automatically
when their domain applications are processed.   For normal users, one must
simply fill out a form from the NIC.  FTP to nic.ddn.mil and get the file
`netinfo/user-template.txt'.  The completed form should be mailed to
`[e-mail]'.


6.4.1  Other Uses of WHOIS


    Also, many educational sites run WHOIS servers of their own, to offer
information about people who may be currently on the staff or attending the
institution.  To specify a WHOIS server, many implementations include some
sort of option or qualifier -- in VMS under MultiNet, it's `/HOST', in Unix `-
h'.  To receive information about using the Stanford server, one might use the
command

     whois -h stanford.edu help

    A large list of systems offering WHOIS services is being maintained by
Matt Power of MIT ([e-mail]). It is available via anonymous FTP
from sipb.mit.edu, in the directory `pub/whois'.  The file is named `whois-
servers.list'.

    The systems available include, but are certainly not limited to, Syracuse
University (syr.edu),  New York University (acfcluster.nyu.edu), the
University of California at San Diego (ucsd.edu), and Stanford University
(stanford.edu).


                                             "Fingers were made before forks."
                                           Jonathan Swift, Polite Conversation
58                                             Zen and the Art of the Internet


Chapter 7: Commercial Services                                              59


7  Commercial Services


    Many services can be accessed through the Internet. As time progresses and
more outlets for commercial activity appear, once-restricted traffic (by the
NSFnet Acceptable Use Policy) may now flow freely.  Now that there are other
networks for that information to travel on, businesses are making their move.


7.1  Electronic Journals


    The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) publishes a hard-copy
directory of electronic journals, newsletters, and scholarly discussion lists.
It is a compilation of entries for hundreds of scholarly lists, dozens of
journals and newsletters, and a many "other" titles, including newsletter-
digests, into one reference source. Each entry includes instructions on how to
access the referenced publication or list.

    The documents are available electronically by sending the commands

     get ejournl1 directry
     get ejournl2 directry

to the server at `[e-mail]'.  See Section 2.2.1 [Listservs],
page 16 for further instructions on using a listserv.

    The directory, along with a compilation by Diane Kovacs called Directories
of Academic E-Mail Conferences, is available in print and on diskette (DOS
WordPerfect and MacWord) from:

     Office of Scientific & Academic Publishing
     Association of Research Libraries
     1527 New Hampshire Avenue, NW
     Washington, DC  20036
     [e-mail]
     [phone]
     [phone] (Fax)

The ARL is a not-for-profit organization representing over one hundred
research libraries in the United States and Canada. The publication is
available to ARL members for $10 and to non-members for $20 (add $5 postage
per directory for foreign addresses).  Orders of six or more copies will
receive a 10% discount; all orders must be prepaid and sent to the ARL.
60                                             Zen and the Art of the Internet


7.2  Commercial Databases


    The American Institute of Physics maintains the Physics Information
Network. It contains the bibliographic SPIN and General Physics Advanced
Abstracts databases. Also available is access to bulletin boards and several
searchable lists (job notices, announcements, etc). Telnet to pinet.aip.org;
new users must log in as `NEW' and give registration information.


7.3  Clarinet News


    Clarinet's an electronic publishing network service that provides
professional news and information, including live UPI wireservice news, in the
Usenet file format. See Chapter 4 [Usenet News], page 29 for more information
about Usenet.

    Clarinet lets you read an "electronic newspaper" right on the local
system; you can get timely industry news, technology related wirestories,
syndicated columns and features, financial information, stock quotes and more.

    Clarinet's provided by using the Usenet message interchange format, and is
available via UUCP and other delivery protocols, including NNTP.

    The main feature is ClariNews, an "electronic newspaper," gathered live
from the wire services of United Press International (UPI).  ClariNews
articles are distributed in 100 newsgroups based on their subject matter, and
are keyworded for additional topics and the geographical location of the
story. ClariNews includes headlines, industry news, box scores, network TV
schedules, and more.  The main products of ClariNews are:

  o  ClariNews General, the general news"paper" with news, sports, and
     features, averaging about 400 stories per day.

  o  TechWire, special groups for stories on science, technology, and industry
     stories around them.

  o  ClariNews-Biz, business and financial stories.

  o  Newsbytes, a daily computer industry newsmagazine.

  o  Syndicated Columns, including Dave Barry (humor) and Mike Royko
     (opinion).
Chapter 7: Commercial Services                                              61


Full information on ClariNet, including subscription information, is
available from

     Clarinet Communications Corp.
     124 King St. North
     Waterloo, Ontario  N2J 2X8
     [e-mail]
     (800) USE-NETS

or with anonymous FTP in the directory `/Clarinet' on ftp.uu.net (see
Section 3.2.2 [Anonymous FTP], page 21).


                 "Needless to say, Aristotle did not envisage modern finance."
                                                     Frederick Copleston, S.J.
                                                  A History of Philosophy, v.1
62                                             Zen and the Art of the Internet


Chapter 8: Things You'll Hear About                                         63


8  Things You'll Hear About


    There are certain things that you'll hear about shortly after you start
actively using the Internet.  Most people assume that everyone's familiar with
them, and they require no additional explanation.  If only that were true!

    This section addresses a few topics that are commonly encountered and
asked about as a new user explores Cyberspace. Some of them are directly
related to how the networks are run today; other points are simply interesting
to read about.


8.1  The Internet Worm


    On November 2, 1988, Robert Morris, Jr., a graduate student in Computer
Science at Cornell, wrote an experimental, self-replicating, self-propagating
program called a worm and injected it into the Internet.  He chose to release
it from MIT, to disguise the fact that the worm came from Cornell.  Morris
soon discovered that the program was replicating and reinfecting machines at a
much faster rate than he had anticipated -- there was a bug.  Ultimately, many
machines at locations around the country either crashed or became "catatonic."
When Morris realized what was happening, he contacted a friend at Harvard to
discuss a solution.  Eventually, they sent an anonymous message from Harvard
over the network, instructing programmers how to kill the worm and prevent
reinfection.   However, because the network route was clogged, this message
did not get through until it was too late. Computers were affected at many
sites, including universities, military sites, and medical research
facilities. The estimated cost of dealing with the worm at each installation
ranged from $200 to more than $53,000.(1)

    The program took advantage of a hole in the debug mode of the Unix
sendmail program, which runs on a system and waits for other systems to
connect to it and give it email, and a hole in the finger daemon fingerd,
which serves finger requests (see Section 6.1 [Finger], page 53).  People at
the University of California at Berkeley and MIT had copies of the program and
were actively disassembling it (returning the program back into its source
form) to try to figure out how it worked.

    Teams of programmers worked non-stop to come up with at least a temporary
fix, to prevent the continued spread of the worm.  After about twelve

_________________________________


 1  Derived in part from a letter by Severo M. Ornstein, in the Communications
    of the ACM, Vol 32 No 6, June 1989.
64                                             Zen and the Art of the Internet


hours, the team at Berkeley came up with steps that would help retard the
spread of the virus.  Another method was also discovered at Purdue and widely
published.  The information didn't get out as quickly as it could have,
however, since so many sites had completely disconnected themselves from the
network.

    After a few days, things slowly began to return to normalcy and everyone
wanted to know who had done it all.  Morris was later named in The New York
Times as the author (though this hadn't yet been officially proven, there was
a substantial body of evidence pointing to Morris).

    Robert T. Morris was convicted of violating the computer Fraud and Abuse
Act (Title 18), and sentenced to three years of probation, 400 hours of
community service, a fine of $10,050, and the costs of his supervision. His
appeal, filed in December, 1990, was rejected the following March.


8.2  The Cuckoo's Egg


    First in an article entitled "Stalking the Wily Hacker," and later in the
book The Cuckoo's Egg, Clifford Stoll detailed his experiences trying to track
down someone breaking into a system at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory in
California.(2)

    A 75-cent discrepancy in the Lab's accounting records led Stoll on a chase
through California, Virginia, and Europe to end up in a small apartment in
Hannover, West Germany.  Stoll dealt with many levels of bureaucracy and red
tape, and worked with the FBI, the CIA, and the German Bundespost trying to
track his hacker down.

    The experiences of Stoll, and particularly his message in speaking
engagements, have all pointed out the dire need for communication between
parties on a network of networks.  The only way everyone can peacefully co-
exist in Cyberspace is by ensuring rapid recognition of any existing problems.


8.3  Organizations


    The indomitable need for humans to congregate and share their common
interests is also present in the computing world.  User groups exist around
the world, where people share ideas and experiences.  Similarly, there are
organizations which are one step "above" user groups; that is to say, they

_________________________________


 2  See the bibliography for full citations.
Chapter 8: Things You'll Hear About                                         65


exist to encourage or promote an idea or set of ideas, rather than support a
specific computer or application of computers.


8.3.1  The Association for Computing Machinery


    The Association for Computing Machinery (the ACM) was founded in 1947,
immediately after Eckert and Mauchly unveiled one of the first electronic
computers, the ENIAC, in 1946. Since then, the ACM has grown by leaps and
bounds, becoming one of the leading educational and scientific societies in
the computer industry.

    The ACM's stated purposes are:

  o  To advance the sciences and arts of information processing;

  o  To promote the free interchange of information about the sciences and
     arts of information processing both among specialists and among the
     public;

  o  To develop and maintain the integrity and competence of individuals
     engaged in the practices of the sciences and arts of information
     processing.

    Membership in the ACM has grown from seventy-eight in September, 1947, to
over 77,000 today. There are local chapters around the world, and many
colleges and universities endorse student chapters. Lecturers frequent these
meetings, which tend to be one step above the normal "user group" gathering.
A large variety of published material is also available at discounted prices
for members of the association.

    The ACM has a number of Special Interest Groups (SIGs) that concentrate on
a certain area of computing, ranging from graphics to the Ada programming
language to security.  Each of the SIGs also publishes its own newsletter.
There is a Usenet group, comp.org.acm, for the discussion of ACM topics.  See
Chapter 4 [Usenet News], page 29 for more information on reading news.

    For more information and a membership application, write to:

     Assocation for Computing Machinery
     1515 Broadway
     New York City, NY  10036
     [e-mail]
     [phone]


8.3.2  Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility


    The CPSR is an alliance of computer professionals concentrating on certain
66                                             Zen and the Art of the Internet


areas of the impact of computer technology on society.  It traces its history
to the fall of 1981, when several researchers in Palo Alto, California,
organized a lunch meeting to discuss their shared concerns about the
connection between computing and the nuclear arms race.  Out of that meeting
and the discussions which followed, CPSR was born, and has been active ever
since.(3)

    The national CPSR program focuses on the following project areas:

  o  Reliability and Risk This area reflects on the concern that overreliance
     on computing technology can lead to unacceptable risks to society.  It
     includes, but isn't limited to, work in analyzing military systems such
     as SDI.

  o  Civil Liberties and Privacy This project is concerned with such topics as
     the FBI National Crime Information Center, the growing use of databases
     by both government and private industry, the right of access to public
     information,  extension of First Amendment rights to electronic
     communication, and establishing legal protections for privacy of
     computerized information.

  o  Computers in the Workplace The CPSR Workplace Project has concentrated
     its attention on the design of software for the workplace, and
     particularly on the philosophy of "participatory design," in which
     software designers work together with users to ensure that systems meet
     the actual needs of that workplace.

  o  The 21st Century Project This is a coalition with other professional
     organizations working towards redirecting national research priorities
     from concentrating on military issues to anticipating and dealing with
     future problems as science and technology enter the next century.

    For more information on the CPSR, contact them at:

     Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility
     P.O. Box 717
     Palo Alto, CA  94302
     [e-mail]
     [phone]
     [phone] (Fax)


8.3.3  The Electronic Frontier Foundation


    The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) was established to help civilize

_________________________________


 3  This section is part of the CPSR's letter to prospective members.
Chapter 8: Things You'll Hear About                                         67


the "electronic frontier" -- the Cyberspacial medium becoming ever-present in
today's society; to make it truly useful and beneficial not just to a
technical elite, but to everyone; and to do this in a way which is in keeping
with the society's highest traditions of the free and open flow of information
and communication.4

    The mission of the EFF is

  o  to engage in and support educational activities which increase popular
     understanding of the opportunities and challenges posed by developments
     in computing and telecommunications;

  o  to develop among policy-makers a better understanding of the issues
     underlying free and open telecommunications, and support the creation of
     legal and structural approaches which will ease the assimilation of these
     new technologies by society;

  o  to raise public awareness about civil liberties issues arising from the
     rapid advancement in the area of new computer-based communications media
     and, where necessary, support litigation in the public interest to
     preserve, protect, and extend First Amendment rights within the realm of
     computing and telecommunications technology;

  o  to encourage and support the development of new tools which will endow
     non-technical users with full and easy access to computer-based
     telecommunications;

    The Usenet newsgroups comp.org.eff.talk and comp.org.eff.news are
dedicated to discussion concerning the EFF. They also have mailing list
counterparts for those that don't have access to Usenet, eff-talk-
[e-mail]  and  [e-mail]   The first is an informal
arena (aka a normal newsgroup) where anyone may voice his or her opinions.
The second, comp.org.eff.news, is a moderated area for regular postings from
the EFF in the form of EFFector Online.  To submit a posting for the EFFector
Online, or to get general information about the EFF, write to [e-mail].
There is also a wealth of information available via anonymous FTP on
ftp.eff.org.

    The EFF can be contacted at

     The Electronic Frontier Foundation, Inc.
     155 Second St. #1
     Cambridge, MA  02141
     [e-mail]
     [phone]
     [phone] (Fax)


_________________________________


 4  This section was derived from `eff.about', available along with other
    material via anonymous FTP from ftp.eff.org
68                                             Zen and the Art of the Internet


8.3.4  The Free Software Foundation


    The Free Software Foundation was started by Richard Stallman (creator of
the popular GNU Emacs editor).  It is dedicated to eliminating restrictions on
copying, redistributing, and modifying software.

    The word "free" in their name does not refer to price; it refers to
freedom.  First, the freedom to copy a program and redistribute it to your
neighbors, so that they can use it as well as you.  Second, the freedom to
change a program, so that you can control it instead of it controlling you;
for this, the source code must be made available to you.

    The Foundation works to provide these freedoms by developing free
compatible replacements for proprietary software.  Specifically, they are
putting together a complete, integrated software system called "GNU" that is
upward-compatible with Unix.(5)  When it is released, everyone will be
permitted to copy it and distribute it to others.  In addition, it will be
distributed with source code, so you will be able to learn about operating
systems by reading it, to port it to your own machine, and to exchange the
changes with others.

    For more information on the Free Software Foundation and the status of the
GNU Project, or for a list of the current tasks that still need to be done,
write to [e-mail].


8.3.5  The League for Programming Freedom


    The League for Programming Freedom is a grass-roots organization of
professors, students, businessmen, programmers and users dedicated to
"bringing back" the freedom to write programs, which they contend has been
lost over the past number years.  The League is not opposed to the legal
system that Congress intended -- copyright on individual programs. Their aim
is to reverse the recent changes made by judges in response to special
interests, often explicitly rejecting the public interest principles of the
Constitution.


_________________________________


 5  As an aside, the editor of the GNU project, emacs, contains a built-in
    LISP interpreter and a large part of its functionality is written in LISP.
    The name GNU is itself recursive (the mainstay of the LISP language); it
    stands for "Gnu's Not Unix."
Chapter 8: Things You'll Hear About                                         69


    The League works to abolish the new monopolies by publishing articles,
talking with public officials, boycotting egregious offenders, and in the
future may intervene in court cases. On May 24, 1989, the League picketed
Lotus headquarters because of their lawsuits, and then again on August 2,
1990. These marches stimulated widespread media coverage for the issue.  They
welcome suggestions for other activities, as well as help in carrying them
out.

    For information on the League and how to join, write to

     League for Programming Freedom
     1 Kendall Square #143
     P.O. Box 9171
     Cambridge, MA  02139
     [e-mail]


8.4  Networking Initiatives


    Research and development are two buzz words often heard when discussing
the networking field -- everything needs to go faster, over longer distances,
for a lower cost.  To "keep current," one should read the various trade
magazines and newspapers, or frequent the networking-oriented newsgroups of
Usenet.  If possible, attend trade shows and symposia like Usenix, Interop,
et. al.


8.4.1  NREN


    The National Research and Education Network (NREN) is a five-year project
approved by Congress in the Fall of 1991.  It's intended to create a national
electronic "super-highway."  The NREN will be 50 times faster than the fastest
available networks (at the time of this writing).  Proponents of the NREN
claim it will be possible to transfer the equivalent of the entire text of the
Encyclopedia Britannica in one second.  Further information, including the
original text of the bill presented by Senator Al Gore (D-TN), is available
through anonymous FTP to nis.nsf.net, in the directory `nsfnet'. In addition,
Vint Cerf wrote on the then-proposed NREN in RFC-1167, Thoughts on the
National Research and Education Network.  See [RFCs], page 73 for information
on obtaining RFCs.
70                                             Zen and the Art of the Internet


    A mailing list, `[e-mail]', is available for discussion of
the NREN; write to `[e-mail]' to be added.


                                    "To talk in publick, to think in solitude,
                                              to read and to hear, to inquire,
                       and to answer inquiries, is the business of a scholar."
                                                                Samuel Johnson
                                                                  Chapter VIII
                                  The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia
Chapter 9: Finding Out More                                                 71


9  Finding Out More


9.1  Internet Resource Guide


    The NSF Network Service Center (NNSC) compiles and makes available an
Internet Resource Guide (IRG). The goal of the guide is to increase the
visibility of various Internet resources that may help users do their work
better. While not yet an exhaustive list, the guide is a useful compendium of
many resources and can be a helpful reference for a new user.

    Resources listed are grouped by types into sections.  Current sections
include descriptions of online library catalogs, data archives, online white
pages directory services, networks, network information centers, and
computational resources, such as supercomputers. Each entry describes the
resource, identifies who can use the resource, explains how to reach the local
network via the Internet, and lists contacts for more information.  The list
is distributed electronically by the NNSC. To receive a guide, or to get on a
mailing list that alerts you to when it is updated,  send a message to
[e-mail].

    The current edition of the IRG is available via anonymous FTP from
nnsc.nsf.net, in the directory `/resource-guide'.


9.2  Requests for Comments


    The internal workings of the Internet are defined by a set of documents
called RFCs (Request for Comments).   The general process for creating an RFC
is for someone wanting something formalized to write a document describing the
issue and mailing it to Jon Postel ([e-mail]).  He acts as a referee for
the proposal.  It is then commented upon by all those wishing to take part in
the discussion (electronically, of course).  It may go through multiple
revisions. Should it be generally accepted as a good idea, it will be assigned
a number and filed with the RFCs.

    The RFCs can be divided into five groups:  required, suggested,
directional,  informational and obsolete.  Required RFCs (e.g.,  RFC-791, The
Internet Protocol) must be implemented on any host connected to the Internet.

    Suggested RFCs are generally implemented by network hosts.  Lack of them
does not preclude access to the Internet, but may impact its usability. RFC-
793, Transmission Control Protocol, is a must for those implementing TCP.
72                                             Zen and the Art of the Internet


    Directional RFCs were discussed and agreed to, but their application has
never come into wide use.  This may be due to the lack of wide need for the
specific application (RFC-937, The Post Office Protocol) or that, although
technically superior, ran against other pervasive approaches (RFC-891, Hello).
It is suggested that, should the facility be required by a particular site, an
implementation be done in accordance with the RFC. This ensures that, should
the idea be one whose time has come, the implementation will be in accordance
with some standard and will be generally usable.

    Informational RFCs contain factual information about the Internet and its
operation (RFC-990, Assigned Numbers).

    There is also a subset of RFCs called FYIs (For Your Information). They
are written in a language much more informal than that used in the other,
standard RFCs.  Topics range from answers to common questions for new and
experienced users to a suggested bibliography.

    Finally, as the Internet has grown and technology has changed, some RFCs
become unnecessary.  These obsolete RFCs cannot be ignored, however.
Frequently when a change is made to some RFC that causes a new one to obsolete
others, the new RFC only contains explanations and motivations for the change.
Understanding the model on which the whole facility is based may involve
reading the original and subsequent RFCs on the topic.

    RFCs and FYIs are available via FTP from many sources, including:

  o  The nic.ddn.mil archive, as `/rfc/rfc-xxxx.txt', where xxxx is the
     number of the RFC.

  o  from ftp.uu.net, in the directory `/RFC'.

    They're also available through mail by writing to [e-mail],
with a `Subject:' line of send RFC-xxxx.TXT, again with xxxx being the RFC
number. To learn about archive servers,  [Archive Servers], page 77.)


               "Knowledge is of two kinds.  We know a subject ourselves, or we
                                  know where we can find information upon it."
                                                                Samuel Johnson
                                                   Letter to Lord Chesterfield
                                                                February, 1755
Conclusion                                                                  73


Conclusion


    This guide is far from complete -- the Internet changes on a daily (if not
hourly) basis.  However, this booklet should provide enough information to
make the incredible breadth and complexity of the Internet a mite less
imposing.  Coupled with some exploration and experimentation, every user has
the potential to be a competent net citizen, using the facilities that are
available to their fullest.

    You, the reader, are strongly encouraged to suggest improvements to any
part of this booklet.  If something was unclear, left you with doubts, or
wasn't addressed, it should be fixed. If you find any problems, inaccuracies,
spelling errors, etc., please report them to:


     Brendan Kehoe
     Department of Computer Science
     Widener University
     Chester, PA 19013


     Internet: [e-mail]
     UUCP: ...!widener!guide-bugs


If you are interested in future updates to this guide (aside from normal new
editions), discussion about information to be included or removed, etc., write
to `[e-mail]' to be placed on a mailing list for such
things.


                      "I've seed de first an de last . . .I seed de beginnin,
                                                     en now I sees de endin."
                                                             William Faulkner
                                                         The Sound & The Fury
                                                                April 8, 1928
74                                             Zen and the Art of the Internet


Appendix A: Getting to Other Networks                                       75


Appendix A  Getting to Other Networks


    Inter-connectivity has been and always will be one of the biggest goals in
computer networking.  The ultimate desire is to make it so one person can
contact anyone else no matter where they are. A number of "gateways" between
networks have been set up. They include:

AppleLink    Quantum Services sells access to AppleLink, which is similar to
             QuantumLink for Commodore computers and PCLink for IBM PCs and
             compatibles. It also provides email access through the address
             `[e-mail]'.

ATTMail      AT&T sells a commercial email service called ATTMail.  Its users
             can be reached by writing to `[e-mail]'.

BIX          Users on BIX (the Byte Information eXchange) can be reached
             through the DAS gateway at `[e-mail]'.

CompuServe (CI$)
             To reach a user on the commercial service CompuServe, you must
             address  the  mail  as  [e-mail],  with xxxxx.xxx
             being their CompuServe user ID. Normally CompuServe ids are
             represented as being separated by a comma (like 71999,141); since
             most mailers don't react well to having commas in addresses, it
             was changed to a period.  For the above address, mail would be
             sent to `[e-mail]'.

EasyNet      Digital sells a service called EasyNet; users that subscribe to
             it can be reached with the addresses [e-mail] or
             `[e-mail]'.

FidoNet      The  FidoNet  computer  network  can  be  reached  by  using  a
             special  addressing  method.   If  John  Smith  is  on  the  node
             `1:2/3.4'  on  FidoNet,  his  or  her  email  address  would  be
             `[e-mail]' (notice how the numbers fall
             in place?).

MCI Mail     MCI also sells email accounts (similar to ATTMail). Users can be
             reached with `[e-mail]'.

PeaceNet     Users on the PeaceNet network can be reached by writing to
             `[e-mail]'.

    This table is far from complete.  In addition to sites not being listed,
some services are not (nor do they plan to be) accessible from the "outside"
(like Prodigy); others, like GEnie, are actively investigating the possibility
of creating a gateway into their system. For the latest information, consult a
list called the Inter-Network Mail Guide. It's available from a number of FTP
sites, including UUNET; see Section 3.2.2 [Anonymous FTP], page 21, for more
information on getting a copy of it using anonymous FTP.
76                                             Zen and the Art of the Internet


Appendix B: Retrieving Files via Email                                      77


Appendix B  Retrieving Files via Email


    For those who have a connection to the Internet, but cannot FTP, there do
exist a few alternatives to get those files you so desperately need. When
requesting files, it's imperative that you keep in mind the size of your
request -- odds are the other people who may be using your link won't be too
receptive to sudden bursts of really heavy traffic on their normally sedate
connection.


Archive Servers


    An alternative to the currently well over-used FTPmail system is taking
advantage of the many archive servers that are presently being maintained.
These are programs that receive email messages that contain commands, and act
on them.  For example, sending an archive server the command `help' will
usually yield, in the form of a piece of email, information on how to use the
various commands that the server has available.

    One such archive server is `[e-mail]'.  Maintained by the
Network Information Center (NIC) in Chantilly, VA, the server is set up to
make all of the information at the NIC available for people who don't have
access to FTP. This also includes the WHOIS service (see Section 6.4.1
[Whois], page 57).  Some sample `Subject:' lines for queries to the NIC server
are:

     Subject: help                         Describes available commands
     Subject: rfc 822                      Sends a copy of RFC-822
     Subject: rfc index                    Sends an index of the available RFCs
     Subject: netinfo domain-template.txt  Sends a domain application
     Subject: whois widener                Sends WHOIS information on `widener'

    More information on using their archive server can be obtained by writing
to their server address [e-mail] with a `Subject:' of help.

    There are different "brands" of archive server, each with its own set of
commands and services.  Among them there often exists a common set of commands
and services (e.g.  `index', `help', etc).  Be that as it may, one should
always consult the individual help for a specific server before assuming the
syntax -- 100K surprises can be hard on a system.


FTP-by-Mail Servers


    Some systems offer people the ability to receive files through a mock-FTP
interface via email.  See Section 3.2.2 [Anonymous FTP], page 21 for
78                                             Zen and the Art of the Internet


a general overview of how to FTP. The effects of providing such a service
varies, although a rule of thumb is that it will probably use a substantial
amount of the available resources on a system.

    The "original" FTP-by-Mail service, BITFTP, is available to BITNET users
from the Princeton node PUCC.  It was once accessible to anyone, but had to be
closed out to non-BITNET users because of the heavy load on the system.

    In response to this closure, Paul Vixie designed and installed a system
called FTPmail on one of Digital's gateway computers, decwrl.dec.com. Write to
`[e-mail]' with `help' in the body of the letter for
instructions on its use. The software is undergoing constant development; once
it reaches a stable state, other sites will be encouraged to adopt it and
provide the service also.
Appendix C: Newsgroup Creation                                              79


Appendix C  Newsgroup Creation


    Everyone has the opportunity to make a Call For Votes on the Usenet and
attempt to create a newsgroup that he/she feels would be of benefit to the
general readership.  The rules governing newsgroup creation have evolved over
the years into a generally accepted method. They only govern the "world"
groups; they aren't applicable to regional or other alternative hierarchies.


Discussion


    A discussion must first take place to address issues like the naming of
the group, where in the group tree it should go (e.g.  rec.sports.koosh vs
rec.games.koosh?),  and whether or not it should be created in the first
place.  The formal Request For Discussion (RFD) should be posted to
news.announce.newgroups, along with any other groups or mailing lists at all
related to the proposed topic.  news.announce.newgroups is moderated. You
should place it first in the `Newsgroups:' header, so that it will get mailed
to the moderator only. The article won't be immediately posted to the other
newsgroups listed; rather, it will give you the opportunity to have the
moderator correct any inconsistencies or mistakes in your RFD. He or she will
take care of posting it to the newsgroups you indicated. Also the `Followup-
To:' header will be set so that the actual discussion takes place only in
news.groups. If a user has difficulty posting to a moderated group, he or she
may mail submissions intended for news.announce.newgroups to the address
`[e-mail]'.

    The final name and charter of the group, and whether it will be moderated
or unmoderated, will be determined during the discussion period. If it's to be
moderated, the discussion will also decide who the moderator will be. If
there's no general agreement on these points among those in favor of a new
group at the end of 30 days, the discussion will be taken into mail rather
than continued posting to news.groups; that way, the proponents of the group
can iron out their differences and come back with a proper proposal, and make
a new Request For Discussion.


Voting


    After the discussion period (which is mandatory), if it's been determined
that a new group really is desired, a name and charter are agreed upon, and
it's been determined whether the group will be moderated (and by whom), a Call
For Votes (CFV) should be posted to news.announce.newgroups, along with any
80                                             Zen and the Art of the Internet


other groups that the original Request For Discussion was posted to. The CFV
should be posted (or mailed to the news.announce.newgroups moderator) as soon
as possible after the discussion ends (to keep it fresh in everyone's mind).

    The Call for Votes should include clear instructions on how to cast a
vote. It's important that it be clearly explained how to both vote for and
against a group (and be of equivalent difficulty or ease). If it's easier for
you or your administrator, two separate addresses can be used to mail yes and
no votes to, providing that they're on the same machine. Regardless of the
method, everyone must have a very specific idea of how to get his/her vote
counted.

    The voting period can last between 21 and 31 days, no matter what the
preliminary results of the vote are. A vote can't be called off simply because
400 "no" votes have come in and only two "yes" votes.  The Call for Votes
should include the exact date that the voting period will end -- only those
votes arriving on the vote-taker's machine before this date can be counted.

    To keep awareness high, the CFV can be repeated during the vote, provided
that it gives the same clear, unbiased instructions for casting a vote as the
original; it also has to be the same proposal as was first posted. The charter
can't change in mid-vote.  Also, votes that're posted don't count -- only
those that were mailed to the vote-taker can be tallied.

    Partial results should never be included; only a statement of the specific
proposal, that a vote is in progress on it, and how to cast a vote.  A mass
acknowledgement ("Mass ACK" or "Vote ACK") is permitted; however, it must be
presented in a way that gives no indication of which way a person voted.  One
way to avoid this is to create one large list of everyone who's voted, and
sort it in alphabetical order. It should not be two sorted lists (of the yes
and no votes, respectively).

    Every vote is autonomous.  The votes for or against one group can't be
transferred to another, similar proposal. A vote can only count for the exact
proposal that it was a response to.  In particular, a vote for or against a
newsgroup under one name can't be counted as a vote for or against another
group with a different name or charter, a different moderated/unmoderated
status, or, if it's moderated, a different moderator or set of moderators.
Whew!

    Finally, the vote has to be explicit; they should be of the form `I vote
for the group foo.bar as proposed' or `I vote against the group foo.bar as
proposed'.  The wording doesn't have to be exact, your intention just has to
be clear.
Appendix C: Newsgroup Creation                                              81


The Result of a Vote


    At the end of the voting period, the vote-taker has to post (to
news.announce.newgroups) the tally and email addresses of the votes received.
Again, it can also be posted to any of the groups listed in the original CFV.
The tally should make clear which way a person voted, so the results can be
verified if it proves necessary to do so.

    After the vote result is posted to news.announce.newgroups, there is a
mandatory five-day waiting period.  This affords everyone the opportunity to
correct any errors or inconsistencies in the voter list or the voting
procedure.


Creation of the Group


    If, after the waiting period, there are no serious objections that might
invalidate the vote, the vote is put to the "water test."  If there were 100
more valid `YES/create' votes than `NO/don't' create votes, and  at least two-
thirds of the total number of votes are in favor of creation, then a newgroup
control message can be sent out (often by the moderator of
news.announce.newgroups).  If the 100-vote margin or the two-thirds percentage
isn't met, the group has failed and can't be created.

    If the proposal failed, all is not lost -- after a six-month waiting
period (a "cooling down"), a new Request For Discussion can be posted to
news.groups, and the whole process can start over again.  If after a couple of
tries it becomes obvious that the group is not wanted or needed, the vote-
taker should humbly step back and accept the opinion of the majority. (As life
goes, so goes Usenet.)
82                                             Zen and the Art of the Internet


Glossary                                                                    83


Glossary


    This glossary is only a tiny subset of all of the various terms and other
things that people regularly use on The Net. For a more complete (and very
entertaining) reference, it's suggested you get a copy of The New Hacker's
Dictionary, which is based on a VERY large text file called the Jargon File.
Edited by Eric Raymond ([e-mail]), it is available from the MIT
Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 02142; its ISBN number is 0-262-68069-6.
Also see RFC-1208, A Glossary of Networking Terms.


    :-)  This odd symbol is one of the ways a person can portray "mood" in the
very flat medium of computers -- by using "smilies."  This is `meta-
communication', and there are literally hundreds of them, from the obvious to
the obscure.  This particular example expresses "happiness." Don't see it?
Tilt your head to the left 90 degrees.  Smilies are also used to denote
sarcasm.

    address resolution  Conversion of an Internet address to the corresponding
physical address.  On an ethernet, resolution requires broadcasting on the
local area network.

    administrivia  Administrative tasks, most often related to the maintenance
of mailing lists, digests, news gateways, etc.

    anonymous FTP  Also known as "anon FTP"; a service provided to make files
available to the general Internet community -- see Section 3.2.2 [Anonymous
FTP], page 21.

    ANSI  The American National Standards Institute disseminates basic
standards like ASCII, and acts as the United States' delegate to the ISO.
Standards can be ordered from ANSI by writing to the ANSI Sales Department,
1430 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, or by telephoning [phone].

    archie  A service which provides lookups for packages in a database of the
offerings of countless of anonymous FTP sites. See Section 3.3.1 [archie],
page 25 for a full description.

    archive server  An email-based file transfer facility offered by some
systems.

    ARPA (Advanced Research Projects Agency)  Former name of DARPA, the
government agency that funded ARPAnet and later the DARPA Internet.
84                                             Zen and the Art of the Internet


    ARPAnet  A pioneering long haul network funded by ARPA. It served as the
basis for early networking research as well as a central backbone during the
development of the Internet.  The ARPAnet consisted of individual packet
switching computers interconnected by leased lines.  The ARPAnet no longer
exists as a singular entity.

    asynchronous  Transmission by individual bytes, not related to specific
timing on the transmitting end.

    auto-magic  Something which happens pseudo-automatically, and is usually
too complex to go into any further than to say it happens "automagically."

    backbone   A high-speed connection within a network that connects shorter,
usually slower circuits. Also used in reference to a system that acts as a
"hub" for activity (although those are becoming much less prevalent now than
they were ten years ago).

    bandwidth  The capacity of a medium to transmit a signal. More informally,
the mythical "size" of The Net, and its ability to carry the files and
messages of those that use it.  Some view certain kinds of traffic (FTPing
hundreds of graphics images, for example) as a "waste of bandwidth" and look
down upon them.

    BITNET (Because It's Time Network)  An NJE-based international educational
network.

    bounce  The return of a piece of mail because of an error in its delivery.

    btw  An abbreviation for "by the way."

    CFV (Call For Votes) Initiates the voting period for a Usenet newsgroup.
At least one (occasionally two or more) email address is customarily included
as a repository for the votes.  See See Appendix C [Newsgroup Creation], page
79 for a full description of the Usenet voting process.

    ClariNews  The fee-based Usenet newsfeed available from ClariNet
Communications.

    client  The user of a network service; also used to describe a computer
that relies upon another for some or all of its resources.

    Cyberspace  A term coined by William Gibson in his fantasy novel
Neuromancer to describe the "world" of computers, and the society that gathers
around them.

    datagram  The basic unit of information passed across the Internet.  It
contains a source and destination address along with data. Large messages are
broken down into a sequence of IP datagrams.

    disassembling  Converting a binary program into human-readable machine
language code.
Glossary                                                                    85


    DNS (Domain Name System)   The method used to convert Internet names to
their corresponding Internet numbers.

    domain  A part of the naming hierarchy.  Syntactically, a domain name
consists of a sequence of names or other words separated by dots.

    dotted quad  A set of four numbers connected with periods that make up an
Internet address; for example, 147.31.254.130.

    email  The vernacular abbreviation for electronic mail.

    email address The UUCP or domain-based address that a user is referred to
with. For example, the author's address is [e-mail].

    ethernet  A 10-million bit per second networking scheme originally
developed by Xerox Corporation. Ethernet is widely used for LANs because it
can network a wide variety of computers, it is not proprietary, and components
are widely available from many commercial sources.

    FDDI (Fiber Distributed Data Interface)  An emerging standard for network
technology based on fiber optics that has been established by ANSI.  FDDI
specifies a 100-million bit per second data rate.  The access control
mechanism uses token ring technology.

    flame  A piece of mail or Usenet posting which is violently argumentative.

    FQDN (Fully Qualified Domain Name)  The FQDN is the full site name of a
system, rather than just its hostname.  For example, the system lisa at
Widener University has a FQDN of lisa.cs.widener.edu.

    FTP (File Transfer Protocol)  The Internet standard high-level protocol
for transferring files from one computer to another.

    FYI  An abbreviation for the phrase "for your information." There is also
a series of RFCs put out by the Network Information Center called FYIs; they
address common questions of new users and many other useful things. See
[RFCs], page 73 for instructions on retrieving FYIs.

    gateway  A special-purpose dedicated computer that attaches to two or more
networks and routes packets from one network to the other.  In particular, an
Internet gateway routes IP datagrams among the networks it connects.  Gateways
route packets to other gateways until they can be delivered to the final
destination directly across one physical network.

    header  The portion of a packet, preceding the actual data, containing
source and destination addresses and error-checking fields.  Also part of a
message or news article.

    hostname  The name given to a machine. (See also FQDN.)

    IMHO (In My Humble Opinion)  This usually accompanies a statement that may
bring about personal offense or strong disagreement.
86                                             Zen and the Art of the Internet


    Internet  A concatenation of many individual TCP/IP campus, state,
regional, and national networks (such as NSFnet, ARPAnet, and Milnet) into one
single logical network all sharing a common addressing scheme.

    Internet number  The dotted-quad address used to specify a certain system.
The Internet number for the site cs.widener.edu is 147.31.254.130.  A resolver
is used to translate between hostnames and Internet addresses.

    interoperate   The ability of multi-vendor computers to work together
using a common set of protocols.  With interoperability, PCs, Macs, Suns, Dec
VAXen, CDC Cybers, etc, all work together allowing one host computer to
communicate with and take advantage of the resources of another.

    ISO (International Organization for Standardization)  Coordinator of the
main networking standards that are put into use today.

    kernel  The level of an operating system or networking system that
contains the system-level commands or all of the functions hidden from the
user.  In a Unix system, the kernel is a program that contains the device
drivers, the memory management routines, the scheduler, and system calls. This
program is always running while the system is operating.

    LAN (Local Area Network)  Any physical network technology that operates at
high speed over short distances (up to a few thousand meters).

    mail gateway  A machine that connects to two or more electronic mail
systems (especially dissimilar mail systems on two different networks) and
transfers mail messages among them.

    mailing list  A possibly moderated discussion group, distributed via email
from a central computer maintaining the list of people involved in the
discussion.

    mail path  A series of machine names used to direct electronic mail from
one user to another.

    medium  The material used to support the transmission of data.  This can
be copper wire, coaxial cable, optical fiber, or electromagnetic wave (as in
microwave).

    multiplex  The division of a single transmission medium into multiple
logical channels supporting many simultaneous sessions.  For example, one
network may have simultaneous FTP, telnet, rlogin, and SMTP connections, all
going at the same time.

    net.citizen  An inhabitant of Cyberspace.  One usually tries to be a good
net.citizen, lest one be flamed.

    netiquette   A pun on "etiquette";  proper behavior on The Net.  See
Section 4.13 [Usenet Netiquette], page 37.
Glossary                                                                    87


    network  A group of machines connected together so they can transmit
information to one another. There are two kinds of networks: local networks
and remote networks.

    NFS (Network File System)  A method developed by Sun Microsystems to allow
computers to share files across a network in a way that makes them appear as
if they're "local" to the system.

    NIC  The Network Information Center.

    node  A computer that is attached to a network; also called a host.

    NSFnet  The national backbone network, funded by the National Science
Foundation and operated by the Merit Corporation, used to interconnect
regional (mid-level) networks such as WestNet to one another.

    packet  The unit of data sent across a packet switching network. The term
is used loosely.  While some Internet literature uses it to refer specifically
to data sent across a physical network, other literature views the Internet as
a packet switching network and describes IP datagrams as packets.

    polling  Connecting to another system to check for things like mail or
news.

    postmaster   The person responsible for taking care of mail problems,
answering queries about users, and other related work at a site.

    protocols  A formal description of message formats and the rules two
computers must follow to exchange those messages. Protocols can describe low-
level details of machine-to-machine interfaces (e.g., the order in which bits
and bytes are sent across a wire) or high-level exchanges between allocation
programs (e.g., the way in which two programs transfer a file across the
Internet).

    recursion   The facility of a programming language to be able to call
functions from within themselves.

    resolve  Translate an Internet name into its equivalent IP address or
other DNS information.

    RFD (Request For Discussion)  Usually a two- to three-week period in which
the particulars of newsgroup creation are battled out.

    route  The path that network traffic takes from its source to its
destination.

    router  A dedicated computer (or other device) that sends packets from one
place to another, paying attention to the current state of the network.

    RTFM (Read The Fantastic Manual) .  This anacronym is often used when
someone asks a simple or common question.  The word `Fantastic' is usually
replaced with one much more vulgar.
88                                             Zen and the Art of the Internet


    SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol)  The Internet standard protocol for
transferring electronic mail messages from one computer to another.  SMTP
specifies how two mail systems interact and the format of control messages
they exchange to transfer mail.

    server  A computer that shares its resources, such as printers and files,
with other computers on the network. An example of this is a Network File
System (NFS) server which shares its disk space with other computers.

    signal-to-noise ratio  When used in reference to Usenet activity, this
describes the relation between amount of actual information in a discussion,
compared to their quantity.  More often than not, there's substantial activity
in a newsgroup, but a very small number of those articles actually contain
anything useful.

    signature  The small, usually four-line message at the bottom of a piece
of email or a Usenet article. In Unix, it's added by creating a file
`.signature' in the user's home directory.  Large signatures are a no-no.

    summarize   To encapsulate a number of responses into one coherent, usable
message.  Often done on controlled mailing lists or active newsgroups, to help
reduce bandwidth.

    synchronous  Data communications in which transmissions are sent at a
fixed rate, with the sending and receiving devices synchronized.

    TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol)  A set of
protocols,  resulting from ARPA efforts,  used by the Internet to support
services such as remote login (telnet), file transfer (FTP) and mail (SMTP).

    telnet  The Internet standard protocol for remote terminal connection
service. Telnet allows a user at one site to interact with a remote
timesharing system at another site as if the user's terminal were connected
directly to the remote computer.

    terminal server  A small, specialized, networked computer that connects
many terminals to a LAN through one network connection. Any user on the
network can then connect to various network hosts.

    TEX  A free typesetting system by Donald Knuth.

    twisted pair  Cable made up of a pair of insulated copper wires wrapped
around each other to cancel the effects of electrical noise.

    UUCP (Unix to Unix Copy Program)  A store-and-forward system, primarily
for Unix systems but currently supported on other platforms (e.g. VMS and
personal computers).

    WAN (Wide-Area Network)  A network spanning hundreds or thousands of
miles.
Glossary                                                                    89


    workstation  A networked personal computing device with more power than a
standard IBM PC or Macintosh.  Typically, a workstation has an operating
system such as unix that is capable of running several tasks at the same time.
It has several megabytes of memory and a large, high-resolution display.
Examples are Sun workstations and Digital DECstations.

    worm  A computer program which replicates itself.  The Internet worm (see
Section 8.1 [The Internet Worm], page 63) was perhaps the most famous; it
successfully (and accidentally) duplicated itself on systems across the
Internet.

    wrt  With respect to.


                                                         "I hate definitions."
                                                             Benjamin Disraeli
                                                     Vivian Grey, bk i chap ii
90                                             Zen and the Art of the Internet


Bibliography                                                                91


Bibliography


    What follows is a compendium of sources that have information that will be
of use to anyone reading this guide. Most of them were used in the writing of
the booklet, while others are simply noted because they are a must for any
good net.citizen's bookshelf.


Books


    Comer, Douglas E. (1991).  Internetworking With TCP/IP, 2nd ed., 2v.
Prentice Hall: Englewood Cliffs, NJ.

    Davidson, John (1988).  An Introduction to TCP/IP. Springer-Verlag:
Berlin.

    Frey, Donnalyn, and Adams, Rick (1989).  !@%::  A Directory of Electronic
Mail Addressing and Networks.  O'Reilly and Associates:  Newton, MA.

    Gibson, William (1984).  Neuromancer. Ace: New York, NY.

    LaQuey, Tracy (1990).  Users' Directory of Computer Networks. Digital
Press: Bedford, MA.

    Levy,  Stephen (1984).   Hackers:  Heroes of the Computer Revolution.
Anchor Press/Doubleday: Garden City, NY.

    Partridge,  Craig  (1988).   Innovations  in  Internetworking.   ARTECH
House: Norwood, MA.

    Quarterman, John S. (1989).  The Matrix: Computer Networks and
Conferencing Systems Worldwide. Digital Press: Bedford, MA.

    Raymond, Eric (ed) (1991).  The New Hacker's Dictionary. MIT Press:
Cambridge, MA.

    Stoll, Clifford (1989).  The Cuckoo's Egg. Doubleday: New York.

    Tanenbaum, Andrew S. (1988).  Computer Networks, 2d ed.  Prentice-Hall:
Englewood Cliffs, NJ.

    Todinao, Grace (1986).  Using UUCP and USENET: A Nutshell Handbook.
O'Reilly and Associates: Newton, MA.

    The Waite Group (1991).  Unix Communications, 2nd ed..  Howard W. Sams &
Company: Indianapolis.
92                                             Zen and the Art of the Internet


Periodicals & Papers


    Barlow, J. Coming Into The Country. Communications of the ACM 34:3 (March
1991): 2.  Addresses "Cyberspace" -- John Barlow was a co-founder of the EFF.

    Collyer, G., and Spencer, H. News Need Not Be Slow. Proceedings of the
1987 Winter USENIX Conference: 181-90. USENIX Association, Berkeley, CA
(January 1987).

    Denning, P. The Internet Worm. American Scientist (March-April 1989): 126-
128.

    ________.The Science of Computing: Computer Networks. American Scientist
(March-April 1985): 127-129.

    Frey, D., and Adams, R. USENET: Death by Success? UNIX REVIEW (August
1987): 55-60.

    Gifford, W. S. ISDN User-Network Interfaces. IEEE Journal on Selected
Areas in Communications (May 1986): 343-348.

    Ginsberg,  K. Getting from Here to There. UNIX REVIEW (January 1986): 45.

    Hiltz, S. R. The Human Element in Computerized Conferencing Systems.
Computer Networks (December 1978): 421-428.

    Horton, M. What is a Domain? Proceedings of the Summer 1984 USENIX
Conference: 368-372. USENIX Association, Berkeley, CA (June 1984).

    Jacobsen, Ole J. Information on TCP/IP. ConneXions -- The Interoperability
Report (July 1988): 14-15.

    Jennings, D., et al. Computer Networking for Scientists. Science (28
February 1986): 943-950.

    Markoff, J. "Author of computer `virus' is son of U.S. electronic security
expert." New York Times (Nov. 5, 1988): A1.

    ________."Computer snarl:  A `back door' ajar." New York Times (Nov. 7,
1988): B10.

    McQuillan, J. M., and Walden, D. C. The ARPA Network Design Decisions.
Computer Networks (1977): 243-289.

    Ornstein, S. M. A letter concerning the Internet worm. Communications of
the ACM 32:6 (June 1989).

    Partridge, C. Mail Routing Using Domain Names:  An Informal Tour.
Proceedings of the 1986 Summer USENIX Conference: 366-76. USENIX Association,
Berkeley, CA (June 1986).
Bibliography                                                                93


    Quarterman, J. Etiquette and Ethics. ConneXions -- The Interoperability
Report (March 1989): 12-16.

    ________.Notable Computer Networks. Communications of the ACM 29:10
(October 1986).  This was the predecessor to The Matrix.

    Raeder, A. W., and Andrews, K. L. Searching Library Catalogs on the
Internet: A Survey. Database Searcher 6 (September 1990): 16-31.

    Seeley, D. A tour of the worm. Proceedings of the 1989 Winter USENIX
Conference: 287-304. USENIX Association, Berkeley, CA (February 1989).

    Shulman, G. Legal Research on USENET Liability Issues. ;login:  The USENIX
Association Newsletter (December 1984): 11-17.

    Smith, K. E-Mail to Anywhere. PC World (March 1988): 220-223.

    Stoll, C. Stalking the Wily Hacker. Communications of the ACM 31:5 (May
1988): 14.  This article grew into the book The Cuckoo's Egg.

    Taylor, D. The Postman Always Rings Twice: Electronic Mail in a Highly
Distributed Environment. Proceedings of the 1988 Winter USENIX Conference:
145-153. USENIX Association, Berkeley, CA (December 1988).

    U.S. Gen'l Accounting Ofc. Computer Security: Virus Highlights Need for
Improved Internet Management. GAO / IMTEC - 89 - 57, (1989). Addresses the
Internet worm.


                                                 "And all else is literature."
                                                                Paul Verlaine
                                                            The Sun, New York
94                                             Zen and the Art of the Internet


Index                                                                       95


Index


  -A-                                finger                             53, 63
ACM                              65  FQDN                                 6, 7
address, email           11, 14, 38  Freenet                                47
address, IP (Internet)    7, 20, 47  FSF (Free Software Foundation)         68
administrivia                15, 83  FTPable Items  16, 17, 43, 47, 57, 67, 75
ANSI                             83
AppleLink                        75    -G-
archie                       25, 26  gateway, mail-news             35, 37, 75
archive servers              11, 72  GNU Project                            68
ARL                              59

  -B-                                  -H-
bang path                        11  headers                                13
BITFTP                           78  help, with archie                      26
BITNET                            8  help, with FTPmail                     78
book bugs                        73  help, with geo server                  50
bounce, mail delivery            14  help, with listservs                   17

  -C-                                  -I-
CARL                         46, 48  Internet number                         7
Clarinet                         60  Internet worm                      63, 89
CompuServe                       75  IRG (Internet Resource Guide)          71
CPSR                             65
crossposting                     41    -J-
Cyberspace        1, 63, 64, 67, 84  journals                               59

  -D-                                  -K-
databases                        60  Knowbot                                48
domains           5, 11, 14, 56, 85
                                       -L-
  -E-                                leased line                             9
EFF                              66  libraries                      27, 46, 71
Electronic Frontier Foundation    6  listserv                   16, 17, 49, 59
Electronic Mail                  11  LPF                                    68
extragalactic database           51
                                       -M-
  -F-                                mailing list                           15
FAQs                             43  MCI Mail                               75
FEDIX                            50  minority scholarships                  50
96                                             Zen and the Art of the Internet


moderation,                          RFC-822, email format                  13
    of newsgroups    34, 35, 79, 80  RFCs (Requests for Comments)       37, 71
Morris, Robert (Jr.)             63
                                       -S-
  -N-                                security                               54
NED                              51  signature files                        37
newsgroups, for testing          39  SLIP links, modem-based IP          9, 19
NJE protocol, for BITNET          8  STIS                                   51
NNTP                         36, 60  Stoll, Cliff                           64
Nutshell Books                   12  subnet                                  7
                                     Sun Managers                           15
  -O-
OCEANIC                          51    -T-
octet                             7  talk                                   55

  -P-                                  -U-
ping                             54  UUCP            8, 11, 13, 36, 60, 73, 85
postmaster           15, 16, 56, 87  UUNET                              20, 32

  -Q-                                  -W-
quotes, stock                    60  Weather                                50
                                     White Pages Pilot Project              48
  -R-                                WHOIS databases                        55
resolving                 7, 20, 86

From comp.mail.misc Sat Jul 11 17:29:41 1992
From: [e-mail] (Brendan Kehoe)
Subject: Zen and the Art of the Internet, Second Edition
Followup-To: misc.books.technical
Date: 8 Jul 1992 08:54:04 -0400
Organization: Widener University Computer Science Dept, Chester PA
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Reply-To: [e-mail] (Brendan Kehoe)


Zen and the Art of the Internet: A Beginner's Guide---your navigator's guide
to the many twists and turns that come with being comfortable with the
Internet.  Published by Prentice Hall, its Second Edition is due to begin
shipping in the middle of July (a couple of weeks).  It has an ISBN of 0-13-
010778-6, and it costs $22.  There are discounts available for large quantity
and educational orders.

Zen is primarily written for people that're comfortable with computers, but
may not have had much (if any) exposure to networks in general.  No one
operating system is targeted; it's purposely "Operating System-neutral."
Whether you use VM, VMS, Unix, DOS, or Billy's Virtual Machine, you should
find this information useful.  Even if you've been using the Net for years,
you'll probably find something in Zen that you hadn't realized existed before.

Zen discusses how to decypher domain names; use email well; what telnet is and
what's available using it; Usenet news (including a lot on proper netiquette);
FTP & archie; the various services that're out there, in their many forms; and
a variety of other topics.

It also features a chapter (my personal favorite) called ``What You'll Hear
About''.  Therein are described the different organizations that are concerned
with or active on the Net, happenings like the Internet Worm and Cliff Stoll's
wily hacker, and discussions of other net lore as well.  I think you'll find
Zen to be a good read, and not anything like the dry technical manuals that so
often proliferate our book shelves.  The first edition was received incredibly
well by the Net in the past few months.  (Send mail to archive-
[e-mail] with the command `send zen hints' in the body of your
message to get instructions on how to get the first edition.  It will continue
to be distributed, irregardless of what future editions may come out.)

Opened with a foreword by Ed Vielmetti, Vice President of MSEN, the second
edition offers roughly 30 pages of new information, and has been completely
"refinished" front to back, with every page rewritten or changed in some way.
You'll find it to be much cleaner and more complete than the first; everything
in the first edition has been supplemented or improved.  It sports a more
complete glossary, an extensive bibliography, and a number of other reference
features.  I've directly incorporated the suggestions of dozens of folks on
the net, in the hopes of making it exactly the kind of book you need.

Let Zen be your guide through Cyberspace.  Comments on either edition are
welcome; please send them to [e-mail]

--
Brendan Kehoe, Sun Network Manager                      [e-mail]
Widener University                                                 Chester, PA